Chinese Ethics

The tradition of Chinese ethical thought is centrally concerned with
questions about how one ought to live: what goes into a worthwhile
life, how to weigh duties toward family versus duties toward
strangers, whether human nature is predisposed to be morally good or
bad, how one ought to relate to the non-human world, the extent to
which one ought to become involved in reforming the larger social and
political structures of one's society, and how one ought to conduct
oneself when in a position of influence or power. The personal,
social, and political are often intertwined in Chinese approaches to
the subject. Anyone who wants to draw from the range of important
traditions of thought on this subject needs to look seriously at the
Chinese tradition. The canonical texts of that tradition have been
memorized by schoolchildren in Asian societies for hundreds of years,
and at the same time have served as objects of sophisticated and
rigorous analysis by scholars and theoreticians rooted in widely
variant traditions and approaches. This article will introduce
ethical issues raised by some of the most influential texts in
Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, Legalism, and Chinese Buddhism.

In the Analects 13.18, the Governor of She tells Confucius
of a Straight Body who reported his father to the authorities for
stealing a sheep. Confucius (Kongzi, best known in the West under his
latinized name, lived in the 6th and 5th
century B.C.E) replies that in his village, uprightness lies in
fathers and sons covering up for each other. In the
Euthyphro, Socrates encounters Euthyphro (whose name can be
translated as “Straight thinker”), reputed for his
religious knowledge and on his way to bring charges against his
father for murder. The conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro
leads to a theoretical inquiry in which various proposed answers as
to piety's ousia (essence) are probed and ultimately found
unsatisfactory, but in which no answer to the piety or impiety of
Euthyphro's action is given. The contrast between these two stories
highlights one of the distinctive features of Chinese ethics in
general: its respect for the practical problem. The practical problem
discussed by Confucius and Socrates is arguably a universal one: the
conflict between loyalty owed to a family member and duty to uphold
public justice within the larger community. Confucius's response is
one dimension of a characteristically Chinese respect for the
practical problem. The nature of the problem demands a practical
response. However, another dimension of a reflective respect
for the practical problem is to maintain a certain humility in the
face of a really hard problem. It is to be skeptical that highly
abstract theories will provide a response that is true to the
complexities of that problem. A tradition exemplifying such respect
will contain influential works that will not pretend to have resolved
recurring tensions within the moral life such as those identified in
the Analects and the Euthyphro.

Confucius gives an immediate practical answer in 13.18, but the
reader and commentators have been left to weave together the various
remarks about filial piety so as to present a rationale for that
answer. These remarks quite often concern rather particular matters,
as is the matter of turning in one's father for stealing a sheep, and
the implications for more general issues are ambiguous. Do fathers
and sons cover up for each other on all occasions, no matter how
serious, and if there is a cover-up, is there also an attempt to
compensate the victim of the wrongdoing? The particularity of these
passages is tied up with the emphasis on praxis. What is sought and
what is discussed is often the answer to a particular practical
problem, and the resulting particularity of the remarks invites
multiple interpretations. The sayings often are presented as emerging
from conversations between Confucius and his students or various
personages with official positions, or among Confucius's students.
One passage (11.22) portrays Confucius as having tailored his advice
according to the character of the particular student: he urges one
student to ask father and elder brother for advice before practicing
something he has learnt, while he urges the other to immediately
practice; the reason is that the first has so much energy that he
needs to be kept back, while the second is retiring and needs to be
urged forward. With this passage in mind, we might then wonder
whether the apparent tension between remarks made in connection with
a concept is to be understood in terms of the differences between the
individuals addressed or the context of the conversation.

All texts that have become canonical within a tradition, of course,
are subject to multiple interpretations, but Chinese texts invite
them. They invite them by articulating themes that stay relatively
close to the pre-theoretical experience that gives rise to the
practical problems of moral life (see Kupperman, 1999 on the role of
experience in Chinese philosophy). The pre-theoretical is not
experience that is a pure given or unconceptualized, nor is it
necessarily experience that is universal in its significance and
intelligibility across different traditions of thought and culture.
This attention to pre-theoretical experience also leads to
differences in format and discursive form: dialogues and stories are
more suited for appealing to and evoking the kind of pre-theoretical
experience that inspires parts of the text. By contrast, much Western
philosophy has gone with Plato in taking the route of increasing
abstraction from pre-theoretical experience.

The contrast is not meant to imply that Chinese philosophy fails to
give rise to theoretical reflection. Theoretical reflection of great
significance arises in the Mozi, Mencius,
Hanfeizi, Xunzi, and Zhuangzi, but there
is more frequent interplay between the theorizing and references to
pre-theoretical experience. In Chinese texts there are suggestions
for theorizing about this experience, but the suggestions often
indicate several different and fruitful directions for theorizing to
go further. These directions may seem incompatible, and they may or
may not be so in the end, but the tensions between these directions
are real. The result is a fruitful ambiguity that poses a
problematic. Pre-theoretical experience poses a practical
problem. Apparently incompatible solutions to problems are partially
theorized in the text, but the apparent incompatibility is not
removed. Much of the value of these texts lies in their leaving the
tensions in place with enough theory given to stimulate thinking
within a certain broadly defined approach. There is more than enough
for the sophisticated theorist to try to interpret or to reconstruct
a more defined position as an extension of that broadly defined
approach. At the same time, the problematic is partly framed with the
language of pre-theoretical experience in the form of dialogue and
story, making the texts accessible to a much broader range of readers
than is usually the case with philosophy texts. The following
sections present some of the major kinds of problematic that appear
in the major schools of Chinese ethical thought.

Confucian ethics is focused around ideals of character and the
constituting traits or virtues. The most frequently discussed ideal
is that of the junzi. The Chinese word originally meant
“prince's son,” but in the Analects it refers to
ethical nobility. The first English translations rendered it
as “gentleman,” but Ames and Rosemont (1998) have usefully
suggested “exemplary person.” Among the traits connected
to ethical nobility are filial piety, a respect for and dedication to
the performance of traditional ritual forms of conduct, and the
ability to judge what the right thing to do is in the given
situation. These traits are virtues in the sense that they are
necessary for following the dao, the way human beings ought
to live their lives. As Yu (2007) points out, the dao plays
the kind of role in ancient Chinese ethics that is analogous to the
role played by
eudaimonia or flourishing, in ancient Greek ethics. The
junzi is the ethical exemplar with the virtues making it
possible to follow the dao.

Besides the concepts of dao and junzi, the concept
of ren is a unifying theme in the Analects. Before
Confucius's time, the concept of ren referred to the
aristocracy of bloodlines, meaning something like the strong and
handsome appearance of an aristocrat. But in the Analects the
concept is of a moral excellence that anyone has the potential to
achieve. Various translations have been given of ren. Many
translations attempt to convey the idea of complete ethical virtue,
connoting a comprehensive state of ethical excellence. In a number of
places in the Analects the ren person is treated as
equivalent to the junzi, indicating that ren has the
meaning of complete or comprehensive moral excellence, lacking no
particular virtue but having them all. However, ren in some
places in the Analects is treated as one virtue among others
such as wisdom and courage. In the narrower sense of being one virtue
among others, it is explained in 12.22 in terms of caring for others.
It is in light of these passages that other translators, such as D.C.
Lau, use ‘benevolence’ to translate ren.
However, others have tried to more explicitly convey the sense of
‘ren’ in the comprehensive sense of
all-encompassing moral virtue through use of the translation
‘Good’ or ‘Goodness’ (see Waley, 1938, 1989;
Slingerland, 2003). It is possible that the sense of ren as
particular virtue and the sense of comprehensive excellence are
related in that attitudes such as care and respect for others may be a
pervasive aspect of different forms of moral excellence, e.g., such
attitudes may be expressed in ritual performance, as discussed below,
or in right or appropriate action according to the context. But this
suggestion is speculative, and because the very nature of ren
remains so elusive, it shall be here referred to simply
as‘ren’.

Why is the central virtue discussed in such an elusive fashion in
the Analects? The answer may lie in the role that
pre-theoretical experience plays in Chinese philosophy. Tan (2005)
has pointed to the number and vividness of the persons in
the Analects who serve as moral exemplars. She suggests that
the text invites us to exercise our imaginations in envisioning what
these people might have been like and what we ourselves might become
in trying to emulate them. Use of the imagination, she points out,
draws our attention to the particularities of virtue and engages our
emotions and desires. Amy Olberding (2008, 2012) develops the notion
of exemplarism into a Confucian epistemology, according to which we
get much of our important knowledge by encountering the relevant
objects or persons. Upon initial contact, we may have little general
knowledge of the qualities that make them so compelling to us, but we
are motivated to further investigate. Confucius treated as exemplars
legendary figures from the early days of the Zhou dynasty, such as the
Duke of Zhou and Kings Wu and Wen. Confucius served as an exemplar to
his students, perhaps of the virtue of ren, though he never
claimed the virtue for himself. Book Ten of the Analects
displays what might appear to be an obsessive concern with the way
Confucius greeted persons in everyday life, e.g., if he saw they were
dressed in mourning dress, he would take on a solemn appearance or
lean forward on the stanchion of his carriage. Such concern becomes
much more comprehensible if Confucius is being treated as an exemplar
of virtue from which the students are trying to learn. The focus of
Book Ten and elsewhere in the Analects also suggests that the
primary locus of virtue is to be found in how people treat each other
in the fabric of everyday life and not in the dramatic moral dilemmas
so much discussed in contemporary Western moral philosophy.

Analects 1.15 likens the project of cultivating one's
character to crafting something fine from raw material: cutting bone,
carving a piece of horn, polishing or grinding a piece of jade. The
chapter also stresses the importance of li (the rites,
ritual) in this project. In the Analects ritual includes
ceremonies of ancestor worship, the burial of parents, and the rules
governing respectful and appropriate behavior between parents and
children. Later the word came to cover a broad range of customs and
practices that spelled out courteous and respectful behavior of many
different kinds. Engaging in ritual, learning to perform it properly
and with the right attitudes of respect while performing it, is to
engage in a kind of cutting and carving and polishing and grinding of
the self. One of the most distinctive marks of Confucian ethics is
the centrality of ritual performance in the ethical cultivation of
character. For example, while Aristotelian habituation generally
corresponds to the Confucian cultivation of character, there
is no comparable emphasis in Aristotle on the role of ritual
performance in this process of character transformation. Yet
Confucians will say that any complete description of self-cultivation
must include a role for the culturally established customs that spell
out what it means to express respect for another person in various
social contexts. Just how that role is conceived in the
Analects is one of the central interpretive puzzles
concerning the Analects. The interpretive question of
howli is central to self-cultivation is posed in
particular about its relation to the chief virtue of ren.

In the Analects 3.3 the Master said, “A man who is not
ren—what has he to do with ritual?” The
implication is that ritual is a means of cultivating and expressing a
ren that is already there, at least in a raw or unrefined
state. This implication about the role of ritual is
consistent with passages of the Analects in which Confucius
shows flexibility on the question of whether to follow established
ritual practice. 9.3 shows him accepting the contemporary practice of
wearing a cheaper silk ceremonial cap rather than the traditional
linen cap. 9.3 also shows Confucius rejecting the contemporary
practice of bowing after one ascends the stairs leading up to the
ruler's dais, and maintaining the traditional practice of bowing
before one ascends the stairs. The implication is that the
contemporary practice expresses the wrong attitude toward the
ruler—presumptuousness in assuming permission to ascend. 9.3
suggests that it is something like the right attitude that is
cultivated and expressed by ritual. Kwong-loi Shun (1993) has called
this kind of understanding of ritual the “instrumental”
interpretation.

However, in other places of the Analects, ritual seems to
take on a more central role in the achievement of ren.
Indeed, it seems to be presented as the key. A very common
translation of 12.1 has Confucius telling his favorite student Yan Hui
that “Restraining yourself and returning to the rites
constitutes ren. If for one day you managed to restrain
yourself and return to the rites, in this way you could lead the
entire world back to ren. The key to achieving ren
lies within yourself—how could it come from others?”
(translation from Slingerland, 2003, though see Li, 2007, for a
different translation of the word wei usually translated as
‘constitutes’, with different implications for the
question of the relation between li and ren). Such
passages have given rise to the “definitionalist”
interpretation, as Shun calls it, which makes li definitive
of the whole of ren. Obviously the instrumental and
definitional interpretations cannot both be true.

Some have argued that such serious conflicts within the text
constitute reasons for thinking that the Analects is an
accretive text, i.e., composed of layers added at different times by
different people with conflicting views. To some extent, viewing
the Analects as accretive is nothing new, but Bruce and
A. Takeo Brooks (1998, 2000) recently have taken that view very far by
identifying Book 4 (and only part of it, for that matter) as the most
reflective of the historical Kongzi's views, and the other books as
stemming from Confucius's students and members of his family. The
different books, and, sometimes, individual passages within the books,
represent different time periods, people, with different agendas who
are responding to different conditions, and often putting forward
incompatible strands of Confucianism. The Brooks suggest that the
parts of the Analects most directly associated with the
historical Confucius and his disciples are the parts that
feature ren as the pre-eminent virtue and that de-emphasize
the role of ritual. The parts that are due to another trend
in Confucianism, headed by Confucius's descendants, are the parts that
elevate ritual as the key to ren. The Brooks's theory of
the Analects has drawn appreciation and disagreement (e.g.,
see Slingerland, 2000 for both). It threatens to dislodge the
assumption that underlies the dominant mode of interpreting
the Analects, which is that the text, or most of it, reflects
the coherent thought of one person.

One response to this interpretive challenge is to acknowledge the real
possibility that different sets of passages are the products of
different thinkers, but also to hold that these different people, even
if they have different pragmatic and political agendas (a factor that
the Brooks tend to emphasize), might also have had different and
philosophically substantial perspectives on common problems. One of
those problems might indeed have been the relation
between ren and
li, and at least part of the explanation of why different
and potentially conflicting things are said about that relation is
that the relation is a difficult one to figure out and that different
thinkers addressing that common problem might reasonably have arrived
at different things to say. Whether these different things are
ultimately irreconcilable remains an open question. One might take a
constructive attitude to these differences, ask what good
philosophical reasons could motivate the different approaches, and
ask whether there is a way of reconciling what all the good reasons
entail.

Kwong-loi Shun's approach exemplifies such a reconciling strategy. He
holds that on the one hand, a particular set of ritual forms are the
conventions that a community has evolved, and without such forms
attitudes such as respect or reverence cannot be made intelligible or
expressed (the truth behind the definitionalist interpretation). In
this sense, li constitutes ren within or for a given
community. On the other hand, different communities may have different
conventions that express respect or reverence, and moreover any given
community may revise its conventions in piecemeal though not wholesale
fashion (the truth behind the instrumentalist interpretation).

Chenyang Li (2007) proposes a different approach based on a different
reading of the word ‘wei’ used in 12.1 and often
translated as ‘constitutes’ to render the crucial line,
“Restraining yourself and returning to the rites
constitutes ren.” Li notes that a common meaning of the
word is ‘make’ or ‘result in.’ The relation
between li and ren need not be construed as either
definitional or constitutive, nor need it be construed as purely
instrumental. Li proposes that li functions something like a
cultural grammar where ren is like mastery of the culture.
Mastery of a language entails mastery of its grammar but not vice
versa.

Both Shun and Li are striving to capture a way in
which ren does not reduce to li but also a way in
which li is more than purely instrumental to the realization
of ren. There are good philosophical reasons for this move.
Consider the reasons for resisting the reduction of
ren to li. As indicated above, 9.3 suggests that
the attitudes of respect and reverence that are expressed by ritual
forms are not reducible to any particular set of such forms, and Shun
has a point in arguing that such attitudes could be expressed by
different sets of such forms as established by different communities.
In studying the cultures of other communities, we recognize that
certain customs are meant to signify respect, even if we do not share
these customs, just as we recognize that something that does not
signify disrespect in our culture does indeed so signify in another
culture. The fact that we can distinguish the attitude from the
ritual forms that we use to express them allows us to consider
alternative ritual forms that could express the same attitude.
Ceremonial caps that are made of more economical material are
acceptable, perhaps, because wearing such caps rather than the
material ones need not affect the spirit of the ceremony. By
contrast, bowing after one ascends the stairs constitutes an
unacceptable change in attitude. To maintain that particular ritual
forms do not define the respect and reverence they are
intended to express is not to underestimate their importance for
cultivating and strengthening these attitudes. Acting in ways that
express respect given the conventionally established meanings of
accepted ritual forms helps to strengthen the agent's disposition to
have respect. The ethical development of character does involve
strengthening some emotional dispositions over others. We strengthen
dispositions by acting on them. By providing conventionally
established, symbolic ways to express respect for others, ritual
forms give participants ways to act on and therefore to strengthen
the right dispositions.

On the other hand, there is good reason to resist the reduction of
li simply to the role of expressing and cultivating a set of
attitudes and emotional dispositions. In his influential
interpretation (1972) of the Analects, Herbert Fingarette
construes ritual performance as an end in itself, as beautiful and
dignified, open and shared participation in ceremonies that celebrate
human community. Ritual performance, internalized so that it becomes
second nature, such that it is gracefully and spontaneously
performed, is a crucial constituent of a fully realized human life.
There are nonconventional dimensions of what it is to show respect,
such as providing food for one's parents (see Analects 2.7),
but the particular way the agent does this will be deeply influenced
by custom. Indeed, custom specifies what is a respectful way of
serving food. On the Confucian view, doing so in a graceful and
whole-hearted fashion as spelled out by the customs of one's
community is part of what it is to live a fully human life.

Ritual constitutes an important part of what ren is, and hence
it is not merely an instrument for refining the substance of
ren. At the same time it is not the whole of ren. Consider
that part of ren that involves attitudinal dispositions.
Attitude is not reducible to ritual form even if acting on that form
can cultivate and sustain attitude. Moreover, 7.30 emphasizes the
connection between desire for ren and its achievement (“If
I simply desire ren, I find that it is already there”).
The achievement of ren is of course a difficult and long
journey, and so 7.30 implies that coming to truly desire it lies at
the heart of that achievement. The multifaceted nature of ren
emerges in Book 12, where Confucius is portrayed as giving different
descriptions of ren. In 12.1, as already noted, he says that
ritual makes for ren. But then in 12.2, he says that ren
involves comporting oneself in public as if one were receiving an
important guest and in the management of the common people behaving
as if one were overseeing a great sacrifice (the duty to be
respectful toward others). 12.2 also associates ren with
shu or “sympathetic understanding,” not imposing
on others what you yourself do not desire. Here the emphasis is not so
much on ritual or not exclusively anyway, but on the attitudes one
displays toward others, and on the ability to understand what others
want or do not want based on projecting oneself into their situation.
In 12.3, when asked about ren, Confucius says
that ren people are hesitant to speak (suggesting that such
people take extreme care not to have their words exceed their
actions). And then in 12.22, when asked about ren, Confucius
says that it is to care for people. Such diverse characterizations are
appropriate if ren is complete ethical virtue or
comprehensive excellence that includes many dimensions, including but
not reducing to the kinds of excellence associated
with li.

If we take the relevant passages on li and ren as
forming a whole in which a coherent view is embedded, there is a
pretty good case for regarding the observance of ritual propriety as a
constituent of ren as well as crucial for instrumentally
realizing some other dimensions of ren. But it does not
exhaust the substance of ren. If the text is as radically
accretive as the Brooks maintain, then the proposed construal of the
relation is more of a reconstruction of what the best philosophical
position might be on the nature of the relation. The reconstructive
possibility should not be disturbing as long as we recognize it for
what it is. Thinkers within a complex and vigorous tradition
frequently re-interpret, expand, develop, revise, and even reject some
of what one has inherited from the past. The fact that the
Analects itself might be a product of this kind of
engagement might usefully be taken as encouragement for its present
students to engage with the text in the same way.

The Confucian position on the importance of li in ethical
cultivation is interesting and distinctive in its own right, and this
is partly because Confucianism hews close to a kind of
pre-theoretical experience of the moral life that might otherwise get
obscured by a more purely theoretical approach to ethics. If we look
at everyday experience of the moral life, we see that much of the
substance of ethically significant attitudes such as respect is in
fact given by cultural norms and practices, and learning a morality
must involve learning these norms and practices. Children learn what
their behavior means to others, and what it should mean, by learning
how to greet each other, make requests, and answer requests, all in a
respectful manner. Much of our everyday experience of moral
socialization lies in the absorption of or teaching to others of
customs that are conventionally established to mean respect,
gratitude, and other ethically significant attitudes. So construed,
Confucian ethics provides an alternative to understanding the nature
of the moral life that is different from an understanding that is
primarily based on abstract principles, even abstract principles that
require respect for each person. This is why there is significant
resonance between Confucianism and communitarian philosophies such as
those defended by Alasdair MacIntyre (1984, 1989) and Michael Walzer
(1983). One of the distinctive marks of communitarianism is the theme
that much of the substance of a morality is given not in abstract
principles of the sort typically defended in modern Western
philosophy but in a society's specific customs and practices. In the
Analects, the ambiguous relation between ren and
li poses the problematic of how we are to understand the
relation between cultural norms and practices on the one hand and
that part of morality that appears to transcend any particular set of
norms and practices. The Analects suggests a large role for
culture, but on the reading suggested here, not a definitional role.
There is much room for theoretical elaboration on the nature of that
role.

Furthermore, in understanding why Confucians take a life of ritual
practice to be partly constitutive of a fully human life, one must
understand the aesthetic dimension of their notion of a fully human
life. Such a life is lived as a beautiful and graceful coordinated
interaction with others according to conventionally established forms
that express mutual respect. A good of the value attached to the fully
human life lies in the aesthetic dimensions of a “dance”
(Ihara, 2004) one performs with others. To better understand why the
moral and the aesthetic cannot be cleanly separated in Confucian
ethics, consider that a graceful and whole-hearted expression of
respect can be beautiful precisely because it reflects the extent that
the agent has made this moral attitude part of her second nature. The
beauty has a moral dimension. Both these themes—the importance
of contextualized moral judgment and aesthetic value of human
interaction according to custom and tradition—offer
opportunities for practitioners of, say, Anglo-American moral
philosophy to reflect on what their approaches to the moral life might
miss.

Consider ren in its meaning as the particular virtue of
caring for others and li in its aspect as the valued human
dance. These values are the basis for characterizing Confucian ethics
as a relational ethic, meaning that it is in part distinguished by its
placement of relationships at the center of a well-lived life (see
Ames, 2011). Confucian ethics are often taken to stand in contrast to
ethics that place individual autonomy and freedom to choose how to
live. While there is much that is true about this contrast, it must be
carefully described so as to differentiate it from some other
contrasts. For example, the value of individual autonomy usually
includes several different dimensions that do not necessarily
accompany one another: (1) prioritizing of individual interests over
group or collective interests when these conflict; (2) giving moral
permission to the individual to choose from a significantly wide range
(within certain moral boundaries) of ways to live; and (3) emphasizing
the importance of living according to one's own understanding of what
is right and good even if others do not see it the same way.

Confucian ethics in significant part, though not in all parts, accepts
autonomy in the sense of (3) (see Shun, 2004; and Brindley,
2010). Confucius is often depicted in the Analects as
emphasizing the importance of cultivating one's own character even
when others do not recognize or appreciate one's efforts (e.g., 4.14)
and of acting independently of what is conventionally approved or
disapproved (e.g., 5.1). The texts associated with Mencius (Mengzi,
best known in the West under his Latinized name, lived in the 4th
century B.C.E.) and Xunzi (4th and 3rd centuries
B.C.E.), the most pivotal thinkers in the classical Confucian
tradition after Confucius, both articulate the necessity to speak up
when one believes the ruler one is serving is on a wrong course of
action (e.g., Mencius 1A3 and Xunzi 29.2). On the
other hand, none of these classical thinkers argue for the necessity
of protecting a frank subordinate from a ruler who is made angry by
criticism, and it could be argued that Confucianism does not fully
endorse autonomy in sense (3) without endorsing such protection for
those who wish to engage in moral criticism of the powerful.

Most interpretations present Confucian ethics as rejecting (2). There
is a way for human beings to live, a comprehensive human good to be
realized, and there can be no choosing between significantly
different ways of life that are equally acceptable from a moral
perspective (an important exception to this kind of interpretation is
provided by Hall and Ames, 1987, who interpret Confucius's
dao as a human invention, collective and individual). On the
other hand, Confucian ethics de-emphasizes legal coercion as a method
for guiding people along the way and instead an puts the emphasis on
moral exhortation and inspiration by way of example (see, most
famously, 2.3 of the Analects, which emphasizes the
necessity of a ruler's guiding his people by instilling in them a sense
of shame rather than by the threat of external punishment). While a
Confucian might believe in a single correct way for human beings, she
might endorse a significant degree of latitude for people to learn
from their own mistakes and by way of example from others (see Chan,
1999).

Confucian ethics does not accept (1), but not because it subordinates
individual interests to group or collective interests (for criticism
of the rather common interpretation of Confucianism as prioritizing
the group over the individual, see Hall and Ames 1998). Rather, there
is a different conception of the relationship between individual and
group interests. The best illustration of this different conception
is a story to be found in the Mencius that concerns
sage-king Shun. When Shun wanted to marry, he knew that his father,
influenced by his stepmother, would not allow him to marry. In this
difficult situation, Shun decided to marry without telling his
father, even though he is renowned for his filial piety. Mencius in
fact defends the filiality of Shun's act in 5A2. He observes that
Shun knew that he would not have been allowed to marry if he told his
father. This would have resulted in bitterness toward his parents,
and that is why he did not tell them. The implication of this version
of Shun's reason is that filiality means preserving an emotionally
viable relationship with one's parents, and in the case at hand Shun
judged that it would have been worse for the relationship to have
asked permission to marry. The conception of the relation between
individual and group interests embodied in this story is not one of
subordination of one to the other but about the mutual dependence
between the individual and the group. The individual depends on the
group and must make the group's interests part of his or her own
interests, but, on the other side of the equation, the group depends
on the individual and must make that individual's interests part of
the group's interests. Shun's welfare depends on his family and
therefore must make his family's interests part of his own (he
resolves to do what is necessary to preserve his relationship to his
parents), but his family's welfare depends on Shun, and therefore it
must recognize his interests to constitute part of its welfare (the
family must recognize that it is damaging itself in requiring Shun to
deny himself the most part important of human relationships).

The ways in which Confucianism values autonomy and the ways in which
it does not has implications for the increasingly discussed issue as
to whether contemporary Confucianism can recognize individual rights.
Given the way that individual and group interest are conceived as
mutually dependent and interwoven, Confucianism cannot recognize
rights that are based on the idea that rights defend the interests of
the individual against group interests (though something like
this conception of rights might be compatible with Confucianism in
case relationships irretrievably break down and individuals need to be
protected; see Chan, 1999). The way that Confucianism values living
according to one's understanding of the right and the good does
provide a basis for the idea that individuals should receive
protection when they express their convictions about these matters,
particularly when they are expressing convictions about the wrongful
or misconceived conduct of their political leaders (Wong, 2004).
Furthermore, Chinese thinkers from the 19th century onwards
have adapted the concept of rights received in interaction with the
West, and these adaptations often articulate the idea that the
individual ought to have a range of freedom of expression and action
so that they can contribute more richly and originally to the welfare
of Chinese society. Chinese thinkers such as Liang Qichao and Japanese
thinkers such as Kato affirmed both the legitimacy of the individual's
desires and the necessity to harmonize individual and group desires
(see Angle and Svensson, 2001; Angle, 2002). Emphasis on the former
would be the relatively new element in a contemporary Confucianism,
but 1B6 of the Mencius provides a striking anticipation of
this element. Here King Xuan tells Mencius that his ability to be a
true king for his people is thwarted by his desires for wealth and for
sex. Mencius replies that if the King accords the common people the
same privileges for wealth and sex, there would be no problem in
becoming a true king. Xunzi (see section 2.6) conceives of morality
as a way of harmonizing the desires of individuals so that destructive
conflict is replaced by productive harmony, and this gives the
satisfaction of desire a central role in his version of Confucian
ethics. Later on in the tradition, Dai Zhen defended the legitimacy
of self-interested desire as long as it is tempered by a proper
concern for others (see Tiwald, 2011a; and section 2.8). Rosemont
(1991, 2004) has argued that “second-generation”
“positive” rights to education and economic security are
better grounded in the Chinese tradition than they have been in the
West.

Along with the emphasis on li, the centrality of filial
piety is one of the most distinctive characteristics of Confucian
ethics. The Analects 2.6 says to give parents no cause for
anxiety other than illness, whereas 2.7, as mentioned earlier,
emphasizes the need for the material support of parents to be carried
out in a respectful manner. 2.8 emphasizes that it is the expression
on one's face that is filial and not just taking on the burden of
work or letting elders partake of the wine and food before others.

Is obedience to parents always required of the filial child? What if
the child believes that parents are wrong and their wishes run
contrary to what is right or to ren? In those cases where one
thinks them wrong, what is one to do? The Analects 2.5
portrays Confucius as saying, “Do not disobey,” but when
queried further as to his meaning, he explains obedience in terms of
conformance to the rites for burying and sacrificing to deceased
parents. In 4.18 Confucius says that when one disagrees with one's
parents, one should remonstrate with them gently. Most translations
of what follows have Confucius concluding that if parents are not
persuaded, one should not oppose them (e.g., Lau, 1979; Slingerland,
2003; Waley, 1938), but it is possible to read the spare and
ambiguously worded passage as requiring instead that one not abandon
one's purpose in respectfully trying to change one's parents' minds
(Legge, 1971). In other Confucian texts, the question of whether
obedience is required has received different answers in the Confucian
tradition. Chapters 1 and 2 of the Record of Ritual (Legge,
1967, vol. 1) say that one must obey if one fails to persuade one's
parent. On the other hand, Xunzi declares that following the
requirements of morality rather than the wishes of one's father is
part of the highest standard of conduct (29.1 of the Xunzi;
for a translation see Knoblock, 1988–94) and moreover that if
following the course of action mandated by one's father would bring
disgrace to the family and not following it would bring honor, then
not following is to act morally (29.2 of the Xunzi). Xunzi's
position is supported in part by the distinction between service to
parents and obedience to them. It might very well fail to be of
service to parents if following their wishes is to bring moral
disgrace to them and the family.

Another ethical issue arising from the strong Confucian emphasis on
filial piety concerns possible conflicts between loyalty to parents
and loyalty to the ruler or public justice. Consider again
Analects 13.18, in which Confucius says that uprightness is
found in sons and fathers covering up for each other. In this case,
at least, loyalty to parents or to children takes precedence over
loyalty to ruler or to public justice. This precedence is one
implication of the Confucian doctrine of love with distinctions
(“love with distinctions” is the usual translation, but
perhaps “care with distinctions” is less misleading
because it covers both the emotionally freighted attitude toward kin
and a more distanced attitude toward strangers). Though all people
are owed moral concern, some are owed more than others, according to
the agent's relationship to them.

To introduce other kinds of problematic treated by Confucian
thinkers, it is necessary to identify a pivotal critic of
Confucianism in the classical period. Mozi (probably 5th
century B.C.E), who possibly was once a student of Confucianism, came
to reject that teaching, partly on the grounds that the Confucian
emphasis on ritual was a wasteful expenditure of resources that could
otherwise be used to meet the basic needs of the many (Mozi,
chapters 25, 32; see Watson, 1967 for a translation). A related
criticism in the text of the Mozi is that tradition does not
hold normative authority simply because it is tradition, for there
was a time when the practice in question was not tradition but new
(chapter 39). If a practice has no authority when it is new, it has
no authority at any subsequent time simply because it is getting
older. Mozi also rejected Confucianism on the grounds that partiality
toward one's own (oneself, one's family, one's state) is at the root
of all destructive conflict (chapter 16). Partiality toward the self
causes the strong to rob the weak. Partiality toward one's family
causes great families wreak havoc with lesser families (it is not
difficult to see how this thought might apply to the idea of
protecting one's own, even if they have committed serious crimes
against others outside the family). Partiality toward one's state
causes great states attack small states. Mozi advocated the doctrine
of universal love or impartial concern.

The substantial following that Mohism gained in the classical period
forced a response from Confucians (see Hansen, 1992, and Van Norden
2007, for a discussion of Mozi's pivotal impact on the Chinese
tradition). They responded on two subjects: first, they had to address
what is required by way of concern for all people and how to reconcile
such concern with the greater concern for some that the Confucian
doctrine of love with distinctions requires; second, they had to
address the question of what kinds of concern are motivationally
possible for human beings, partly in response to the Mohist argument
that it is not difficult to act on impartial concern, and partly in
response to others who were skeptical about the possibility of acting
on any kind of genuinely other-regarding concern. Mencius, in the text
purporting to be a record of his teachings, explicitly sets himself to
the task of defending Confucianism not only against Mohism but the
teachings of Yang Zhu. Yang's teachings seemed to Mencius to sit on
the opposite end of the spectrum from Mohism (there is no surviving
text purporting to articulate and defend Yangism). According to
Mencius's characterization, Yang Zhu criticized both Mohism and
Confucianism for asking people to sacrifice themselves for
others. Yang Zhu on this view was an ethical egoist: i.e., one who
holds that it is always right to promote one's own welfare. Mencius
positioned Confucianism as the occupying the correct mean between the
extremes of having concern only for oneself on the one hand and having
an equal degree of concern for everyone.

Mencius 1A7 purports to be an account of a conversation
between Mencius and King Xuan, the ruler of a Chinese state. Mencius
is attempting to persuade the king to adopt the Confucian
dao or way of ruling. The king wonders whether he really can
be the kind of king Mencius is advocating, and Mencius replies by
asking whether the following story he has heard about the king is
true. The story is that the king saw an ox being led to slaughter for
a ritual sacrifice. The king decided to spare the ox and substituted
a lamb for the ritual sacrifice. Thinking back on that occasion, the
king recalls that it was the look in the ox's eyes, like that of an
innocent man being led to execution, that led him to substitute the
lamb. Mencius then comments that this story demonstrates the king's
capability to become a true king, and that all he has to do is to
extend the sort of compassion he showed the ox to his own people. If
he can care for an ox, he can care for his subjects. To say that he
can care for an ox but not for his people is like saying “my
strength is sufficient to lift heavy weight, but not enough to lift a
feather” (translation adapted from Lau, 1970) His failure to
act on behalf of his people is due simply to his not acting, not to
an inability to act. What the king has to do, suggests Mencius, is to
treat the aged in his family as aged, and then extend it to the aged
in other families; treat his young ones as young ones, and extend it
to the young ones of others; then you can turn the whole world in the
palm of his hand.

The passage demonstrates one characteristic of the text that is
pertinent to Mencius's response to Mohism. In contrast to the
Analects, the ruler's duties to care for his people are more
frequently discussed and play a more prominent role in the conception
of a ruler's moral excellence. Mencius is portrayed in this text as
very much engaged in getting the kings of Chinese states to stop
mistreating their subjects, to stop drafting their subjects into
their wars of territorial expansion, and to avoid overtaxing them to
finance their wars and lavish projects. At the same time, Mencius's
assertion that the king is able to extend the kind of concern he
showed the ox toward his own people is a reply to those who advocate
Yangism on the grounds that acting for one's own sake is natural.
Mencius holds that natural compassion is a part of human nature. The
task of moral self-cultivation is the task of “extending”
what is natural. What is natural, or at least more so, is properly
acting toward the aged and the young in one's family and then
extending that to the aged and the young in other families.

Extension is necessary because natural compassion is uneven compared
to where it ought to extend. King Xuan may find it natural to have
compassion for an innocent man about to be executed or a terrified ox
about to be slaughtered, but not toward all his subjects when he is
focusing on the benefits that a war of territorial expansion might
bring him. This story of Mencius, the King, and the ox is rich
material for reflection on the nature of moral development. It seems
plausible that development must begin with something that is of the
right nature to be shaped into the moral virtues, and also plausible
that what we begin with is not as it fully should be. The questions
posed by the story is what the natural basis of morality is and how
further development occurs. Mencius's theory of the
“four duan” addresses these
questions. “Duan” literally means “tip of
something” and is often translated as “beginnings”
in this context.

What are the four beginnings of morality? In 2A6 human nature
(ren xing) it is said that no person is devoid of a heart
(the word for heart in Chinese stands for the seat of thinking and
feeling, hence often translated as “the mind”) sensitive
to the suffering of others, and to illustrate this beginning, Mencius
asks us to suppose that a man were suddenly to see a young child
about to fall into a well. Such a man would certainly be moved to
compassion, not because he wanted to get in the good graces of the
parents, nor because he wished to win the praise of his fellow
villagers or friends, nor yet because he disliked the cry of the
child. This natural compassion can develop into the virtue of
ren (in Mencius, ren is more often a particular
virtue that concerns caring and hence is often translated as
“benevolence”). A second beginning is the heart that feels
shame in certain situations, e.g., in 6A10, Mencius says that if rice
and soup are offered after being trampled upon, even a beggar would
disdain them. Under the right conditions, innate shame develops into
the virtue of
yi or righteousness—being able to do the right thing.
The third beginning is the heart that feels courtesy,e.g., the
younger sometimes instinctively knows to respect and be courteous to
the older. Under the right conditions, courtesy develops into
li, which as a virtue consists in the observance of the
rites or the virtue of ritual propriety. And finally, there is the
heart that has a sense of right and wrong (shi/fei, the
thing to do or not to do). Under the right conditions, this sense of
approval and disapproval develops into wisdom, which includes having
a grasp of the spirit behind moral rules so that one knows how to be
flexible in applying them.

It is important to note that Mencian beginnings of morality are not
just blind feelings or primitive urges to act in certain ways, but
contain within them certain intuitive judgments about what is right
and wrong, what is to be disdained and what is deferential, respectful
behavior. In the example of the beggar who does not accept food that
has been trampled upon, it seems that Mencius is suggesting we have an
original, unlearned sense that allows us to judge the sort of respect
that is due to ourselves as human beings. Similarly, in suggesting
that we have an unlearned sense of deference, Mencius is suggesting
that we have an unlearned sense of what is due to others such as
elders and our parents. Mencius's theory tallies with some of the more
recent theories of emotion that point toward the intertwining of
cognitive and affective dimensions (the theory does not necessarily
imply, however, that the affective amounts to nothing more than the
cognitive, as shall be discussed later).

The Mencius contains different metaphors that convey a view
of human nature as the basis for moral development. On one metaphor,
used in a debate with rival philosopher Gaozi in 6A2, the inborn
goodness of human nature is like the tendency of water to flow
downward. The metaphor implies that human beings develop virtues in
the absence of abnormal interference such as water being damned up or
struck so that it splashes upward. On the other way of conceiving
ethical development, the four beginnings are more like barley sprouts
that need nurture analogous to sun, water, and fertile soil (6A7).
That these two conceptions are significantly different can be seen
through the recognition that “growing” conditions for the sprouts are
not necessarily provided in the normal course of affairs.

In some passages, extension is characterized as a matter of simply
preserving or not losing what is given to one at birth (4B12, 4B19,
4B28, 6A10, 6A11), and such passages accord with the water metaphor in
suggesting that moral development happens in the absence of abnormal
interference. In other places, the thinking seems to be more in
accord with the sprout metaphor and identifies conditions for moral
development that go well beyond noninterference: kings are held
responsible for providing for their subjects a constant means of
livelihood (1A7) that enables them to support parents and nurture wife
and children; kings must also ensure the appropriate moral education
about filial piety, about the duties that rulers and subjects owe to
each other and about respect for the elder. Mencius furthermore
recognized natural predispositions other than the four beginnings that
could potentially lead human beings astray. He mentions the desires of
the senses in this regard (6A15). This is why Mencius places
responsibility on everyone to si (reflect on, turn over in
one's mind) (6A14, 6A15) the manifestations of the four
beginnings. With such reflection, human beings can recognize that
virtue takes precedence over satisfaction of potentially conflicting
desires and feelings (e.g., the priority of righteousness over the
desire for life if one cannot have both), but lack of reflection will
stunt moral development (6A9). If the deprivation of nourishing
conditions is severe enough, the sprouts can be killed off
(6A8). Thus, while Mencius is often characterized superficially by his
saying that human nature is good (6A6), he means (at least when his
thinking is guided by the sprout metaphor) that it contains
predispositions to feel and act in morally appropriate ways and to
make intuitive normative judgments that can with the right nurturing
conditions give human beings guidance as to the proper emphasis to be
given to the desires of the senses (see Shun, 1997; Van Norden, 2004,
2007).

It is not surprising that there should be the kind of ambiguity
expressed by the juxtaposition of the water and sprout metaphors in
Mencius. A very common contemporary conception of the innate comes
very close to the implications of the water metaphor, i.e., that which
develops under normal conditions. On the other hand, we are also
capable of recognizing that other things develop under a narrower or
much more contingent (not necessarily realized in the normal course of
affairs) set of conditions. A barley sprout develops only if human
beings plant it in the right kind of soil and put effort into
cultivating it. Yet it seems intuitively correct to say that its
direction of growth is innate. If the conditions for growth are
realized, it will become a barley plant, not a corn plant.
Contemporary thinking about the innate bases of morality also shows
this range of thinking. Claims that morality is constrained by an
innate universal grammar (e.g., Hauser, 2008; Mikhail, 2011) seem
closer to the idea that the moral (or its underlying universal
structure) develops under normal conditions; other conceptions
acknowledge more of a role for contingent factors (Nichols, 2004;
Haidt and Bjorklund 2008). The ambiguity in Mencius' thought, then,
anticipates contemporary swings in thinking about the relative roles
of what human beings are born with and what they acquire through
learning, experience and culture.

Much of what is fascinating in Mencius lies in his explorations of how
moral learning takes place and how this learning might also interact
with emotion. Consider now in combination the theme that the
cognitive and affective go into the constitution of emotion and the
theme that the emotional beginnings of morality can be extended
through provision of the right kind of nurture. What is necessary for
extension? Is cognitive extension, i.e., more moral knowledge,
sufficient? The answer to this question depends on the nature of the
intertwining between the cognitive and affective in emotions. Consider
again the story of King Xuan and the ox. Mencius expresses confidence
in King Xuan's ability to have compassion for his people, based on his
act of compassion for the ox. Here the question of whether cognitive
extension is sufficient emerges in the concrete. Was it sufficient for
Mencius to have reminded the king that he has even more of a reason to
spare his people from suffering than he had to spare the ox from
suffering (more reason because Mencius clearly ranks the interests of
animals below those of human beings, and because for him there is a
good moral reason for the performance of ritual sacrifices)? Logical
consistency alone cannot be expected to provide motivation, as David
Nivison has pointed out (1996), but then what is Mencius trying to do
with the King if not move him through logic?

Nowhere in the Mencius is there enough said to point to a
definitive interpretation on this matter, but various reconstructions
of possible positions can be given. Perhaps the King's innate nature
contains all the motivation he needs, and all that Mencius is doing is
reminding him that he has the motivation to spare his people. This
interpretation seems roughly in accord with Mencius' likening moral
development to water flowing downward: it will proceed unless
interfered with. Perhaps the King's nature needs some degree of
transformation that starts with the sort of compassion he can feel for
a terrified ox or an innocent man about to be executed and then
expands the scope of that compassion to more of its appropriate
objects. This interpretation seems roughly in accord with Mencius'
likening moral development to the growth of sprouts that need the
appropriate water, soil and cultivation efforts. (See Im, 1999,
Ivanhoe, 2002, Shun, 1997, Wong, 2002, Van Norden, 2007, and McRae
2011 for a range of different possible positions that could be
attributed to Mencius).

What seems philosophically fruitful about the Xuan and ox story is
that it portrays an attempt at moral teaching of the kind that
actually occurs in the moral life, and the ambiguity that it presents
to the reader is fruitful precisely because it is not a completely
theorized story. We are not told exactly what Mencius is trying to do
with the King in terms of a theory of the nature of emotions and the
relation between the cognitive and affective. Rather, we are led to
reflect on the most plausible possibilities in trying to arrive at a
reconstruction of what might have been meant by the text, as well as
what might be the most illuminating position on its own merits. The
story is particularly intriguing for those philosophers who believe in
the possibility that learning can influence emotion.

What about the priority of filial loyalty over loyalty to the larger
community? How does Mencius's theory of human nature address this
point of contention between the Mohists and the Confucians? Mencius's
response to the Mohists draws from his theory of human nature as
containing not only the beginnings of affective motivations for being
moral but also intuitive judgments about what is right and about what
deserves the feeling of shame. His question to a Mohist, Yizi, is how
Yizi can justify providing his deceased parents a special burial when
the Mohist prescriptions are for a plain burial for anyone. Yizi's
reply is to quote from the Book of History: the sage-kings
treated all their subjects as if they were their new-born children.
Yizi's interpretation of this saying is that there should be no
distinctions in one's concern for people, though the practice of it
may begin with one's parents (this may be an expression of the
distinction between having equal concern and accepting practice that
allow unequal treatment as long as the total system of practices can
be justified on the basis of equal concern for all). Mencius's
counter-reply is to ask whether Yizi really holds that a person loves
his elder brother's son no more than his neighbor's baby. This is not
just an assertion about what people tend to feel but also an assertion
about what people intuitively hold to be right to feel and to do. Then
Mencius makes a puzzling remark to the effect that Yizi is singling
out a special feature in a certain case: “when a new-born babe
creeps toward a well, it is not its fault.” This last part of
Mencius's response is puzzling because Yizi did not say anything about
a baby and a well. One possibility is that Yizi may have obliquely
referred to Mencius's claim that all have the original and unlearned
feeling of distress at seeing a child about to fall into a well. In
other words, Yizi might have been challenging Mencius by asking,
“Does not your own postulated unlearned compassion require us to
treat that child the same way, regardless of whose child it is?”
This way of taking Yizi helps makes sense of Mencius's reply. First,
he points out what he takes to be the indisputably greater affection
one feels for elder brother's son over one's neighbor's baby. Mencius
grants that we all respond to a child about to fall into the well with
alarm and distress, and it doesn't matter whose child it is. However,
one cannot infer from this one special situation that we ought to have
equal concern for everyone in all situations. The case of the
child about to fall into the well has a special feature that makes it
relevant to treat it as one would any child. That special feature
seems to be innocence.

The Mencian position is premised on the principle that it is right to
treat all people alike only when the ways they are alike are the most
ethically relevant features of the situation. We should do the same
thing only when the similarities between two cases are the most
ethically relevant features of the situation. Mencius believes that
in many instances, the presence or absence of a family relationship
to a person is the most relevant feature (in deciding which children
to give gifts, the fact that one child is one's elder brother's son
and the other child is one's neighbor's child may be the most
relevant feature). In other types of situations, such as a child
about to fall into a well, it is the innocence that children share
that is the most relevant feature. That is why it is proper to feel
alarm or distress toward any child in that situation. The implied
application of this idea to the sage-kings' treatment of the people
is that these kings treated all people alike insofar as they did not
deserve the harm about to befall them.

Two issues arise from this response to Mohism. One issue is whether
Mencius has sufficient warrant to trust the kinds of intuitive
judgments he attributes to human nature. Mencius holds that the
beginnings of morality are sent by Heaven, but in the absence of such
a metaphysical warrant, can these intuitive judgments be accepted,
particularly the ones that underwrite love with distinctions? Doubt
about the metaphysical warrant may not doom Mencius's response to
Mohism, however, if one holds that all normative theories ultimately
depend on intuitive judgments and if one has no good reason to be
skeptical about these judgments. Thus one might hold that whether or
not there is a metaphysical warrant, there is a great deal of
plausibility to the intuitive judgment about owing parents more
concern because they are the source of one's life and nurturance. Of
course one might also hold, as Mencius appears to hold, that people
are owed concern in virtue of their being human, and the possibility
for conflict of duties arises from these different sources of
concern. The second issue is how the Mencius text deals with
conflicts of the sort exemplified by the sheep-stealing case in the
Analects.

The text contains themes embodying the theme of filial loyalty, and
as in the Analects, such loyalty takes precedence over
public justice. 7A35 tells a story about the sage-emperor Shun that
illustrates this theme. Because Shun was renowned for his filial
piety, Mencius is asked what Shun would have done if his father
killed a man. Mencius replies that Shun could not stop the judge from
apprehending his father because the judge had the legal authority to
act. But then, Mencius says, Shun would have abdicated and fled with
his father to the edge of the sea. 5A2 and 5A3 describe the way that
Shun dealt with his half-brother Xiang's conspiring with his father
and stepmother to kill him. He enfeoffed Xiang because all he could
do as a brother is to love him. At the same time, Shun appointed
officials to administer the fief and to collect taxes and tributes,
to protect the people of Youbi from Xiang's potentially abusive
ruling. That is why some called Shun's act a banishment of Xiang.
However, the Shun stories exhibit a complexity that differentiates
them from the story of the sheep-stealing coverup in the
Analects. Though filial loyalty is clearly given a priority
in each story, there is in Shun's actions an acknowledgment of the
other value that comes into conflict with filial loyalty. Though Shun
ultimately gives priority to filial loyalty in the case of his
father, his first action acknowledges the value of public justice by
declining to interfere with the judge while he is king. While Shun
declines to punish his half-brother, he protects the people of
Xiang's new fiefdom.

These Shun stories illustrate that an agent's response to a situation
in which important values come into conflict need not be a strict
choice between honoring one value and wholly denying the other. While
some sort of priority might have to be set in the end, there are also
ways to acknowledge the value that is subordinated, but how exactly
that is to be done seems very much a matter of judgment in the
particular situation at hand. The Shun stories are an expression of
the Confucian theme that rightness cannot be judged on the basis of
exceptionless general principles but a matter of judgment in the
particular situation. It is difficult to see how this theme can be
taught except by the way it is done in the Mencius: through
exemplars of how it is done, and where the situation is presented
through some kind of narrative.

The characteristic form of reasoning in Mencius is analogical
reasoning. Starting from what seems true in one case and
“extending” similar conclusions to another case that has
similar conclusions. The trick in doing analogical reasoning
correctly, as suggested earlier, is to extend the similar conclusions
only when the two cases share ethically relevant and decisive
features. The Mencius 4A17 shows a similar concern for
treating like cases alike. Mencius grants that to save the life of
one's drowning sister-in-law, one of course suspends the customary
rule of propriety prohibiting the touching of man and woman when they
are giving and receiving. Another philosopher proposes to apply this
idea of suspending the usual rules of propriety to save something
else from drowning—the entire Empire! Mencius replies that one
saves one's sister-in-law with one's hand but cannot save the Empire
from drowning in chaos and corruption with one's hand. The Empire can
only be pulled out by the Way. Mencius is rejecting the analogy
between compromising on ritual propriety to save the country and
compromising on propriety to save one's sister-in-law. There is a
relevant dissimilarity between the case of the drowning sister-in-law
and saving the country: one cannot save the Empire through
compromises of ritual propriety, but instead by following the Way,
which itself involves following ritual propriety.

So what do we do when we confront a problematic case in the present
and we do not automatically know what the right thing to do is?
Mencius believes we can rely on past cases in which we have made
reliable judgments about, for example, what is right and shameful.
These reliable judgments made in past cases serve as paradigms or
exemplars of correct ethical judgment. In encountering new
problem situations, we determine what sort of ethical reaction to the
new situation is correct by asking which of the cases in which we've
had paradigm judgments are relevantly similar. We then determine what
reactions to the new situations would be sufficiently similar to the
relevant paradigm judgments. Analogical reasoning is careful
attention and comparing to a concrete paradigm. The pool of
paradigm ethical judgments we have not only includes cases from our
own personal experience, but also include the experience of others,
especially those who serve as models of wise judgment. The stories of
sage-king Shun in the Mencius text seem to give us such
paradigms. Shun's judgments on what to do about conflicts between
filial loyalty and public justice are perhaps meant to serve as
paradigm judgments. The conception of moral reasoning found in the
Mencius offers important material for reflection on the
process of moral judgment, especially for those who have come to
reject the simple model of judgment as deduction from premises
including a general moral principle and a description of the
conditions that make the principle applicable to the situation at
hand. The Mencian picture includes general moral considerations or
values that bear on the situation at hand, such as the importance of
family loyalty and public justice, but the picture also suggests that
judgment in difficult situations includes finding a way to adequate
recognize and realize the values in play. “Finding a way”
seems much more a matter of imagination and ingenuity rather than
deduction, but the Mencian picture also suggests that we can be
guided by exemplars of wise judgment. Identifying the relevant
similarities and dissimilarities between these exemplars and one's
present situation seems a matter of perception and close attention
rather than deduction from principle.

In the Xing E (“[Human] Nature is Bad”) chapter, Xunzi
explicitly opposes his position on human nature to Mencius's. He
asserts that far from being good, human nature is bad because it
includes a love of profit, envy and hatred, and desires of the eyes
and ears that lead to violence and anarchy. To avoid these
consequences of indulging our spontaneous desires and impulses, it
takes wei (conscious activity or deliberate effort), models
and teaching, and guidance through observing ritual and yi
(standards of righteousness). Through such efforts, natural emotions
and desires are transformed as a crooked piece of wood is steamed and
then straightened upon a press frame. All rituals and standards of
righteousness are sheng (generated, produced) by the sages.
These are generated from the conscious activity of the sages and not
from their original nature. Just as the vessel made by a potter is
generated from his conscious activity and not his original nature, so
the sages accumulated their thoughts and ideas and made a practice of
conscious activity and precedents, thereby generating rituals and
standards of righteousness.

Part of Xunzi's argument against Mencius is that human nature is not
what is produced by conscious activity but rather that which is
already there in human beings independently of conscious activity.
Since it is clear that human beings are not already good but must work
at it, it is clear that human nature cannot be good. When Mencius is
attributed the water-metaphor view of the human inclination toward
goodness, Xunzi's criticism has a point. Becoming good does not seem
to be merely a matter of not interfering with what will unfold in
normal circumstances. However, when Mencius is attributed the
sprout-metaphor view, the differences between him and Xunzi are more
subtle. On the sprout-metaphor view, effort and reflection must be
put into the project of extending the sprouts to where they should be.
It might be thought that one of the real differences between Mencius
and Xunzi is that the former believes the necessary effort lies in
growing or extending what lies in human nature, whereas the latter
beieves that the effort lies in remaking and reshaping what lies in
human nature. Perhaps one believes that we can go “with the grain” of
what we are born with, and the other believes we must go “against the
grain.”

Each thinker emphasizes one of these opposing directions,
but it is a credit to the subtlety and power of their views that each
also takes into account the direction that the other
emphasizes. Mencius acknowledges that moral development is hindered
when a person pays more attention to the “small” parts of the self
that include desires for sensual and material satisfaction and fails
to use the heart-mind to reflect on the great parts that have
normative priority. In the chapter on rituals, Xunzi identifies
natural and powerful emotional dispositions such as love of one's own
kind that rituals must give expression to and that seem to form more
of a positive basis for moral development. Such natural love is
expressed in love for parents and intense grief upon their deaths,
which must be given appropriate expression in mourning and burial
rituals. Thus Mencius acknowledges that there are natural parts of
the self that must be disciplined and held in check while Xunzi
acknowledges that there are natural parts that are largely congenial
to morality in the sense that they are the natural basis for taking
great satisfaction and contentment in virtue once one has gotten the
self-aggrandizing desires and emotions under control.

Another disagreement between Mencius and Xunzi has to do with Mencius'
claim that human nature contains moral predispositions. As indicated
earlier, such Mencian predispositions appear to contain moral
intuitions (e.g., about what is shameful and right or wrong). On one
plausible interpretation of Mencius, morality is part of the order
imparted to the world by tian or heaven. By contrast, Xunzi
seems to rule out the existence of natural predispositions with moral
content when he claims that the sage kings generated ritual principles
and precepts of moral duty. One natural interpretation of “generated”
is “created” or “invented.” On these interpretations of each thinker,
the contrast between Mencius and Xunzi exemplifies the contrast
between a robust moral realism that has moral properties such as
rightness existing independently of human invention and a
constructivist position that makes moral properties dependent on human
invention.

The interpretation of Xunzi as a constructivist does not
necessarily commit him to a denial of the objectivity of morality or
to the denial that there is a single objectively correct morality. It
is possible to see Xunzi as a constructivist about morality but also
as an objectivist (see Nivison, 1991). On the constructivist
interpretation, Xunzi holds a functional conception of morality,
according to which it is invented to harmonize the interests of
individuals and to constrain and transform the heedless pursuit of
short-term gratification for the sake of promoting the long-term
interests of the individual and the group. Ritual principles and moral
precepts are invented to accomplish such a function, and human nature
constrains which of the possible principles and precepts are better or
worse for accomplishing that function. Xunzi's point about the
mourning rituals prescribed by Confucians being suited to the nature
of human love for one's parents is a case in point.

Xunzi's functional theory of morality bears added interest for those
exploring the possibilities of a naturalistic approach to morality.
One fairly common interpretation of Xunzi's conception
of tian or heaven is that it is an order-giving force in the
cosmos that is neutral to whatever human beings have come to regard as
right and good. In fact, a translation that better conveys such a
meaning for ‘tian’ is “nature,” which
is the translation given by Knoblock's valued translation of
the Xunzi. Textual passages that support this interpretation
stress that tian operates according to patterns that remain
constant no matter what human beings do or whether they appeal to it
for good fortune (chapter 17). It is the proper task of human beings
to understand what these patterns are in order to take advantage of
them (e.g., so that they may know to plow in the spring, weed in the
summer, harvest in the fall, and store in the winter).

Such a view of the difference between Xunzi and Mencius, however,
depends on interpretations that been disputed in favor of alternative
interpretations. Roger Ames (1991, 2002) defends an interpretation of
Mencius that gives the greatest role in shaping the direction of moral
development to human “creative social intelligence” rather
than tian conceived as a force operating independently of
human beings. For a contrasting view, see Irene Bloom (1994, 1997,
2002), who, sometimes in response to Ames, defends a greater role for
biology in her interpretation of Mencius while also leaving an
important role for culture. The Xunzi text is also
susceptible to very different interpretations, partly because of the
originality of its synthesis of several streams of thought:
Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and the Jixia Academy. When Xunzi
asserts that tian is unresponsive to human supplication and
ritual sacrifice, it looks as if he might be drawing from Daoism (see
below), but when he refers to the tian-given faculties human
beings should exercise to solve the problem of conflict, he might be
interpreted as implying that tian conferred these faculties
upon human beings for the purpose of solving the problem of
conflict and realizing fulfilling human lives together (see Eno 1990;
and Machle, 1993 for an exploration of the rich interpretive
possibilities regarding Xunzi's conception of tian). While
it might still be possible to interpret Xunzi as a constructivist on
the origin of morality, this alternative interpretation might suggest
that Xunzi's tian had a blueprint it intended human beings to
fulfill. Under alternative interpretations of Mencius and Xunzi,
then, the differences do not disappear, but they might form even more
subtle contrasts.

Even some of the theoretical difficulties that Xunzi has are
instructive. In pressing his case against Mencius for the badness of
human nature, he stresses the self-serving drives of human nature.
Unlike Hobbes, he does not accept that human beings are inevitably
motivated by self-interest, and he does not try to base adherence to
moral norms on the basis of self-interest alone. This arguably is a
promising move, given the heavy criticism that can be directed
against the Hobbesian project and subsequent attempts to carry it out
its basic idea (see Gauthier, 1986 for such an attempt; see
Vallentyne, 1991 for criticism). Xunzi rather argues that the
problems created by unrestrained self-interest point to the need to
transform human motivation. People can come to love moral virtue and
the rites for their own sakes, and this is necessary, on Xunzi's
view, for a stable solution to the problem of conflict between
self-interested individuals. At times, Xunzi suggests that the
intellect can override the desires arising from the natural emotions,
but it remains unclear as to how self-regarding motivations can
become a love of virtue and the rites simply because the intellect
approves of them. The parts of Xunzi asserting a more complex picture
of human motivation suggest a solution. If human beings are capable
of genuine compassion and concern for others, as the chapter on rites
suggests, then the ritual principles and moral precepts invented by
the sage kings have some motivational leverage for the birth of a
love of virtue and rites. Such a solution draws from what
are arguably some of the most plausible positions of Mencius: that
human beings are capable of altruism and compassion even if they are
motivated much of the time by self-interest; and that moral
transformation is a matter of cultivating and extending a
motivational substance that is congenial to morality.

Mencius and Xunzi, then, offer sophisticated theories that expand the
range of possible ways of understanding moral knowledge, motivation,
and the nature of morality itself. Mencius presents an interesting
conception of the way that we reason by analogy from intuitive
judgments and also a plausible conception of innate predispositions
that are compatible with a major role for learning and upbringing in
the development of character and virtue. Those who are more
naturalistically inclined in their approach to morality (at least
insofar as this involves resisting the idea of a transcendent source
of moral properties) may find Xunzi's functional conception of
morality appealing, especially if it allows for a degree of
objectivity regarding the content of morality.

In recent years, Gilbert Harman (1998–99, 1999–2000) and John Doris
(2002) have pointed to the influence of situations over attitude and
behavior as a problem for virtue ethics. Citing empirical work in
social psychology, Harman and Doris claim that the extensive and
surprising influence of situational factors undermines the commonsense
idea that people possess stable character traits that explain what
they do. Some of the classic psychological studies used in this
argument appear to show that ordinary respectable American citizens
will administer dangerous electrical shocks to an innocent person when
urged to do so by an experimenter in a lab coat (Milgram 1974), and
that being late for an appointment is the most influential factor in
whether a seminary student will stop and help someone who seems to be
falling ill, even if the appointment is to attend a lecture on the
Good Samaritan (Darley and Batson 1973). Such studies pose a problem
not only for the commonsense conception of character traits, but also
for virtue ethics, which appear to assume the possibility of
achieving stable character traits that are virtues. Perhaps human
beings are inevitably creatures who are influenced by the situation in
which they act and not by any characterlogical dispositions they bring
with them to the situation. If so, it appears that the ideal of
attaining virtues is misguided.

There are good reasons to expect Confucianism to offer some
distinctive resources for dealing with this problem. First, as
pointed out in 2.3, Confucians appreciate the relational nature of
human life: who we are as persons very much includes our social
context: the people with whom we are in relationship and our
institutions and practices. So they are very much in a position to
appreciate situational influences on how human beings think, feel, and
act. Second, they appear to hold something like a conception of
virtues as stable character traits that are resistant to undue
situational influences. As noted in 2.3, and this pertains to the
challenge posed by the Milgram study, the Confucians emphasize the
importance of living according to one's own understanding of what is
right and good even if others do not see it the same way. Third, as
noted at the beginning of this entry, Chinese philosophy in general is
distinguished by a focus on the practical. This is illustrated in the
Confucian case by the tradition of scholar-officials who not only
wrote about and taught the importance of the ethical to the political
life, but strove to enact this importance in their own careers. As a
consequence, they were very much concerned with specifying in
practical terms how one could go about cultivating the virtues in
oneself. Fourth, and this is very much in response to the combination
of the previous points, they describe a long and arduous program of
ethical training to inculcate the virtues.

As Edward Slingerland (2011) has put it, Confucianism is in a good
position to appreciate the “high bar” challenge of situational
influence to the project of cultivating the virtues in oneself and
others. In response to this challenge, their program of ethical
training includes study of the classics (after the ancient period, the
classics came to include, of course, the Analects and
the Mencius), memorized and rehearsed until they become fully
internalized and embedded in the unconscious patterns of thought that
are so powerful in shaping what we do in everyday life (see
Slingerland 2009). This is one characteristic pattern of Confucian
self-cultivation: one consciously, deliberately and assiduously
undertakes a program that inculcates dispositions to have ethically
appropriate emotional responses and patterns of conduct. The intent
is to make the dispositions for these responses reliable and resistant
to undue situational influence.

Furthermore, the Confucians very much appreciated the power of models
to inspire, to make one want to transcend one's present self. The
psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2003) has given empirical evidence for an
emotion he calls “elevation,” which is something like awe and
admiration upon contemplating the morally admirable.
The Analects, in fact, has been read as a record of how a group
of men gathered around a teacher with the power to elevate, and as a
record of how this group created a culture in which goals of
self-transformation were treated as collaborative projects. These
people not only discussed the nature of self-cultivation but enacted
it as a relational process in which they supported one another,
reinforced their common goals, and served as checks on each other in
case they went off the path, the dao. They were each other's
situational influences. See Sarkissian, 2010 for the argument that
Confucius shows how one can turn the power of situations on people's
attitudes and behavior toward positive ends; if situations can
influence people, one can through small details of comportment and
attitude be a situational influence on others that tilts
things toward a better course.

Training in ritual, li, takes on another dimension of
importance in light of the situationist problem. As noted in section
2.2 Confucian rituals help to express attitudes of respect and
reverence for others that can exist independently of the rituals
themselves, but rituals provide conventionally established, symbolic
ways to express these attitudes toward others. Ritual forms,
therefore, give participants manifold and (just as importantly)
regularly recurring ways to act on and therefore to strengthen the
right attitudes and behavioral dispositions. Given the renewed
appreciation in contemporary psychology for the power of emotions to
influence attitude and behavior, the resource offered by ritual
training should not be ignored by anyone concerned about the problem
of how to resist undue situational influence.

Finally, Confucianism points to the possibility that individuals,
under the right circumstances and encouragement, can enhance their
reflective control of their own emotions and impulses. Mencius'
conversation with King Xuan can be conceived as an attempt to get the
king to nourish his moral sprouts by reflecting on them, to become
aware of what his moral emotions are (such as compassion) and to take
action to grow them. It should be noted that contemporary psychology
is exploring some possible venues for the regulation of one's
emotions and impulses. See Walter Mischel's by-now classic study
(1989) of children who are able to defer gratification for greater
reward in the future (here's one marshmallow; if you can wait fifteen
minutes before you eat it you can have another one). It turns out the
effective delayers use strategies of diverting their attentional focus
from the marshmallow sitting in front of them. Projects are underway
to teach children these strategies. See Lieberman (2011) and Creswell
(2007) for studies indicating that meditation focused on cultivating
compassion in oneself can be effective through enhancing one's ability
to identify and gain better control of one's emotions.

Finally, in considering why robust character traits that could
qualify as virtues are so rare, we should consider the perspective
that very much informs the self-cultivation projects of Confucius and
his students. They were very much aware of the lack of virtue as a
social and political condition and not merely as an individual
condition that just happened to be widespread (Hutton 2006 makes this
point). There is a reason why Confucius and Mencius after him sought
to have kings adopt their teachings. If in fact the achievement of
robust virtues requires long and hard training, supported and guided
by others who have taken similar paths before, and if as Mencius 1A7
holds, people cannot engage in such training until they have the
material security that enables them to take their minds off the sheer
task of survival, then it is no mystery at all why there are no such
traits in societies structured to achieve very different
goals. Ironically, the situationist psychological experiments do not
take into account this underlying relational factor that might deeply
influence the ability of people to form robust virtues, and neither do
the philosophical critics of virtue ethics who rely on the
situationist experimental evidence.

Zhu Xi (1130–1200) reinterpreted ethical themes inherited from
the classical thinkers and grounded them in a cosmology and
metaphysics that had absorbed the influence of Buddhism, particularly
as it transformed in its interaction with Daoism when entering China
(see the chapters on Zhu Xi and Wang Yang Ming in Ivanhoe, 1993 for
the neo-Confucian reaction Buddhism and Daoism). Zhu established the
Confucian canon that served as a basis for the Chinese civil service
examination, including the Analects and Mencius,
along with the Great Learning (Da Xue) and
Doctrine of the Mean (Zhong Yong). In fact, he had
his greatest influence through the commentaries he wrote on these
texts (see Gardner, 2003 for a discussion of the influence of Zhu Xi's
reading of the Analects). Zhu affirmed the Mencian theme that
human nature is good, with greater emphasis on that vein of thought in
the Mencius that stresses that goodness is internal to human
beings and will develop in the absence of interference. This reading
of Mencius is unsurprising given the influence of Buddhism on the
Neo-Confucians, and it meant the demotion of Xunzi within the
influential Neo-Confucian reading of the tradition. Much of Zhu's
metaphysics centers on the relation between li (in this case
not ritual but principle or pattern or the fit and coherence between
things) and qi (the material force or energy stuff from which
objects emerge and return at the end of their existence). How Zhu Xi
conceived this relation is a matter of interpretive debate. Some view
him as holding a dualistic metaphysics in analogy to the way that
Plato's distinction between the Forms and the sensible world is often
taken to embody a metaphysical dualism (Fung, 1948, chapter
25). However, others interpret Zhu's li not as ontologically
prior to qi but rather as being a pattern or deep structure
that is immanent within and expressed by qi and delineates
the range and possibilities of qi's transformations (Graham,
1986; Thompson, 1988). Others have noted that li appears to
have both subjective and objective aspects: it lays down the lines
along which everything moves in a way that is independent of personal
desires; but on the other hand, it is related to the pattern of one's
profoundest responses to things (see Angle, 2009, for an attempt to
reconcile these aspects). With regard to qi, Zhu Xi held
that even though goodness is within human nature, individuals differed
with respect to their native endowment of energy stuff, and that this,
togther with differences in their family and social circumstances,
affected the development of their good natures.

Zhu Xi saw one's self-cultivation as a matter of apprehending the
li of one's own mind, largely through meditation practice,
and, at the same time, investigating the li or patterns of
things not only as revealed in texts such as the Analects
but as embodied in concrete situations, including the patterns in
relationships between persons. Both kinds of activities must be
conducted with jing, which in Zhu's thought means respectful
attention. Zhu is sometimes characterized as a kind of scholastic,
but he emphasized study of the texts in conjunction with acting, with
observing li in external situations and relationships, and
realizing the correspondence between the li of one's own
mind and the li of texts and of situations and
relationships. Apprehending li in a concrete situation in
order to respond appropriately to it was not a simple matter of
absorbing generalizations from texts and applying it to the
situation, but rather a matter of bringing to bear a mind that has
been cultivated by meditation and by study of the texts and by
observing and acting in previous situations. Such a mind can take
into account relevant ethical considerations and is disciplined in
attending to the situation (see the chapter on Zhu Xi in Ivanhoe,
1993; and Gardner, 1990).

The other Neo-Confucian whose influence rivals that of Zhu Xi is Wang
Yang Ming (1472–1529). Wang saw Zhu's emphasis on the
investigation of patterns in external things as overly scholastic and
leading to abstract speculation rather than practical guidance. He
rejected what he saw to be the intellectualization of personal
realization, and identified the mind with li (xin ji
li or mind is pattern or principle). This means that the
dispositions to judge properly the appropriate action in various
situations constitute the mind's original pure state. Li is
not to be sought as a pattern residing in an independently existing
external world but embodied in judgments of the mind (this seems to
commit Wang to an identification of the world with the experienced
world and to a denial of a mind-independent world). Wang's version of
the Mencian theme that human nature is good is therefore even more
innatist than Zhu Xi's (see Ivanhoe, 1990, for a
comparison of Mencius and Wang Yang Ming). Original goodness does not
need completion through learning about the external world. Then why
aren't all people fully good? Why are some very bad? Wang's answer is
that selfish desires cloud the sun of the complete and perfect moral
mind, and that the task of human beings is to eliminate selfish
desires and recover that mind (Chan, 1963, sections 21, 62).

One of Wang's better-known themes is the unity of knowledge and
action. There can be no gap between knowing what to do and doing it.
Genuine knowledge is necessarily practical. Selfish desires and
emotions get in the way of achieving genuine knowledge. One way of
understanding this identification is to take knowledge as a knowing
how to act that is expressed in acting. One expresses one's knowing
how to ride a bicycle by riding, not by articulating propositions
about how to ride a bicycle that one might not be able to act upon.
Furthermore, knowledge is particularist and context-sensitive in
nature and is expressed in intuitive reactions to the present moment.
Knowing how to ride a bicycle is continually reacting by shifting
one's body first this way and then that way to the changing center of
gravity of one's body in tandem with the bicycle. The moral life, on
Wang's view, is like that rather than applying a static set of
generalizations one learns before encountering the situations in
which one needs to act. Notice also that the kinesthetic sensations
blend seamlessly with the bodily responses to those sensations that
help one to go forward and keep one's balance on a bicycle. In
genuine moral knowledge, perception of the situation at hand blends
seamlessly with the right response to it.

In emphasizing that the ultimate ideal is a kind of spontaneous and
intuitive perceiving of the situation and the right response to it,
Wang Yang Ming joins with Zhu Xi. However, this does not mean that
there were not important dissenting voices. Dai Zhen defended an
ethical ideal in which deliberative reflection on the right thing to
do continues to play an important role and not just at stages in which
one is a considerable distance from realizing the ideal. Dai
particularly emphasizes the necessity for imagining the effects of
one's actions on others, which might help one better share their
sorrows and joys. Whereas Zhu equated spontaneous and non-conscious
identification with others as a reflection of the wholeheartedness of
one's motivations, Dai counters that needing to deliberate over the
right thing to do is compatible with a wholehearted acting on one's
judgment when one arrives at it. Dai is inclined to give desires for
the self a legitimate place in ethical reflection because he holds
that one's valuing of relationships can be strengthened when one
understands that the other's flourishing is tied up with one's own
(see Tiwald 2010, 2011a, 2011b).

Mozi, as indicated earlier, advocated the doctrine of impartial
concern. The Mozi text does not make clear what this
doctrine amounts to in practice. Mozi criticizes partial-minded
people who do nothing positive for others if these others are not
related to them in the right way. Does this mean that to have
impartial concern is to have equal concern for others no matter what
one's relationship to them? Mozi's opposition to Confucianism might
be taken to imply a positive answer to this question. However, some
of Mozi's argumentation also presupposes that it is one's duty to see
that the needs of one's family are provided for. He discusses filial
piety as a virtue. This might suggest that one has special
responsibility for one's family and parents.

One way to reconcile these comments is to distinguish the requirement
that one have equal concern from the requirement that one treat
others equally. We might reasonably attribute the former to Mozi but
not the latter, so as to leave open the permissibility of individual
agents treating people unequally (this seems to have been the
position adopted by later Mohists in the so-called Mohist
Canons; see Fraser, 2007). This might be permissible if agents
are acting within a system of practices that can be justified as a
whole on the basis of equal concern for all people. For example,
suppose we have a system in which families have the resources to
satisfy the needs of their own members, or, if families or
individuals lack such resources on their own, they are given aid from
some common pool of resources. Chapter 19 makes explicit reference to
the need to provide for those without family to care for them. This
arrangement might seem morally acceptable from the standpoint of
equal concern for each person and at the same time allow for
individual agents to make extra efforts on behalf of their own family
members. Thus construed, Mozi's ethics is a kind of consequentialism
that measures rightness in terms of consequences, where each person's
welfare is to be considered equally, and where what is judged to be
right might be a practice as well as particular actions.

Because Confucian care with distinctions requires the extension of
care to non-kin, and because a reasonable interpretation or
reconstruction of Mozi's impartial concern would allow special
treatment of one's kin, there is not as dramatic a difference as one
might first think between Confucian and Mohist ethics on the
practical level. However, there might indeed be significant
differences when loyalty to kin and commitment to public justice come
into conflict, and certainly differences on the value of ritual
performance (though many Confucians might be unhappy with the Mohist
portrayal of their tradition as insisting on extravagantly expensive
ritual with musical accompaniment). One source of that difference
lies in the plurality of sources of duty in Confucianism, in contrast
to monistic Mohist consequentialism, where value comes down to the
promotion of benefit and avoidance of harm, where benefit and harm
are specified in fairly narrow ways. By contrast, consider the kind
of reasons given in the Analects for filial actions. One
reason is the duty to reciprocate great benefits. This reason emerges
in Analects 8.3, in which Zengzi is portrayed as near death.
He bids his students to look at his hands and feet, and quotes lines
from the Book of Odes to convey the idea that all his life he has
been keeping his body intact as part of his duty to his parents. In
17.21, Confucius defends the traditional three-year mourning period
for the death of parents, implying that a period shorter than three
years is inappropriate given that a child is completely dependent on
his parents for three years. For the Confucians, special
relationships create special duties that necessarily differ in their
source from duties to strangers outside the family and outside one's
state.

The Mozi is quite explicit in its consequentialism. Chapter
35 names three fa or standards for judging the viability of
beliefs and theories. One standard is of usefulness. In applying this
standard, one assesses the viability of a belief or theory according
to the beneficial or harmful consequences of acting on it. Another
standard is that of consulting the origin, which is the historical
record on the actions of the sage-kings. One determines whether the
belief or theory being judged accords with those actions. The third
standard is looking at evidence provided by the eyes and ears of the
people. This seems to refer to observations that garner some degree
of intersubjective consensus. Each standard is presented as if its
validity might be independent from the others, but there are
indications that the standard of usefulness is the most basic one.
For one thing, consulting the record of the sage-kings' actions
hardly seems to be a good idea in Mohist terms given the Mohist
objection to valuing tradition for its own sake, unless
these actions are good guides because they produced good results, a
historical judgment that was commonly accepted by otherwise disputing
philosophical schools. Furthermore, arguments given in the
Mozi that are purportedly based on intersubjective
observation seem extremely dubious, e.g., that ghosts exist because
stories are told about them very often. At one point in chapter 31,
in fact, the possibility that ghosts do not exist is explicitly
admitted, but sacrifices to spirits are justified on the grounds that
they produce good effects among the living. Ghosts in general are put
to good use in the text: their primary activity is to avenge
themselves upon the living persons who have done them wrong. The
standard of usefulness guides application of the other standards.
Even the attempted justification of the standard of usefulness by
reference to the will of tian or Heaven (in chapter 26) has
a suspect circularity to it. We are to promote benefits and avoid
harms because that is the will of Heaven, and Heaven's will is to be
relied upon because it is the wisest and noblest of all agents. But
what could be the criterion for a being's being wise and noble
exception the promotion of benefits and avoidance of harms?
Furthermore, the will of Heaven is demonstrated by the fact that
wrongdoers are punished and the virtuous rewarded. Again, the
evidence seems highly selective and is guided by the very standard of
usefulness that it is supposedly being justified.

Is Mohist consequentialism comparable to Western utilitarianism? They
are alike in that both kinds of ethic stress impartial concern and
judgment of what is right in terms of promoting benefit and avoiding
harm. Disanalogies are important here also. There is no attempt to
make explicit in the Mozi how exactly the consequences of alternative
actions or practices are to be compared against each other in
deciding what to do. This contrasts with contemporary forms of
utilitarianism that explicitly make maximizing the net greatest sum
total of good over bad the criterion of right action or practice (but
neither Mill nor Bentham were very explicit about this matter
either). Another difference is that Mozi's conception of benefit is
very concrete and relatively narrow, lacking in any psychological
dimension such as happiness. To promote benefits is to relieve
poverty, increase the population, and promote stability and order.

For some philosophers, Confucian acceptance of the plural sources of
moral duty is the right position, and they will see the Mohist
position as implausibly reductive of the complexity of the moral
life. However, one burden placed on such a position is to explain how
conflicts between these different sources of moral duty can be dealt
with, and it is not clear from the Analects how the
Confucian junzi makes the right choices in the face of such
conflicts. The Mohist position promises a foundational standard for
dealing with such conflicts—promoting benefits and avoiding
harms, with each person being counted equally. The standard is vague
on how benefits and harms are to be aggregated in judging the
rightness of actions and practices, and one might well raise
questions as to how benefits and harms are ultimately to be
distributed across persons, and whether a purely consequentialist
distribution really provides morally acceptable results. On the other
hand, Mohists may claim that they have at least provided some
standard to work with.

Other important questions arose in the debate between the Confucians
and the Mohists. Much of the debate that took place had to do with
skepticism about the ability of human beings to act on the doctrine
of impartial concern. Isn't partiality toward one's own natural and
inevitable? One Mohist response (chapter 16) to this question is that
there is no particular problem in getting people to act in this way
once the facts are brought before them. One such alleged fact is that
people respond in kind to the treatment they receive (curiously,
reciprocity serves as a norm for Confucians, it serves as a
generalization for Mohists). So, if one wishes others to
confer benefits on oneself, one confers benefits on them. If one
wishes good for one's family, one will confer benefits on other
families so that they will confer benefits on one's own family.
Another Mohist response is that the sage kings practiced impartial
concern, so it must be possible. Still another response is that
rulers can motivate their subjects to do even very difficult things.
The Mohist theme that no transformation of human character is needed
to act on the right values stands in striking contrast to the
Confucian theme that intellectual and emotional self-transformation
of character is required to follow the dao.

It may appear that the Mohist arguments for acting on impartial
concern are rather superficial and invite quick refutation, but
Confucians could also be accused of glossing over the difficulties of
getting people to have concern for all (if not equal and impartial
concern). As Analects 1.2 has it, the achievement of proper
relationships within the family is the basis of the achievement of
proper relationships to those outside the family, but this is not
only to neglect the possibility that it is much easier to develop
concern for those with whom one is interdependent but also to neglect
conflicts of the sort illustrated by the story of Shun's father
murdering a man. In circumstances where concern for family regularly
comes into tension with concern for those outside the family it may
be very difficult indeed for filial concern to develop into concern
for all.

In the Daodejing (the text is associated with Laozi and is
thought to have originated sometime in the period of
6th-3rd century B.C.E.) and Zhuangzi
(a text associated with the historical Zhuangzi who lived in the
4th century B.C.E.) the focus shifts from the human social
world to the cosmos, in which that human world often appears to be
tiny and insignificant or even comically and absurdly self-important.
It may seem that such a distanced and detached perspective has no
ethical content or implications, but that is to assume an overly
narrow vision of the ethical. In its own way, Daoism addresses as
much as Confucianism does questions as to how one ought to live one's
life. Daoist ethics emphasizes appropriate responsiveness to the
broader world that shapes and enfolds the human social world.

The nature of the vision of the broader world is open to dispute. A
traditional interpretation of the Daodejing is that it
conveys a metaphysical vision of the dao as the source of
all things, and that this source is specially associated in nonbeing
and emptiness as contrasted with being, perhaps suggesting that the
dao is an indeterminate ontological ground in which the
myriad individual things are incipient. Some contemporary
commentators hold that the traditional interpretation is an
imposition on the text of later metaphysical concerns (Hansen, 1992;
LaFargue, 1992). Others hew closer to the traditional interpretation,
citing passages such as those in chapter 4, where Dao is described as
being empty, as seeming something like the ancestor of the myriad of
things, as appearing to precede the Lord (di).

However that issue is resolved, it is apparent that a certain
conception of the patterns of nature is embedded in the text and
informs its ethical recommendations. Consider the characterizations
of natural processes as falling into one or another of opposites:
there is the active, aggressive, hard, and the male, on the one hand;
and there is the passive, yielding, soft, and female, on the other
hand (later these forces were much more explicitly associated with
yang and yin). Conventional “knowledge”
and “wisdom” dichotomizes processes into one or another
of these categories and values the first over the second. The
Daodejing extols the efficacy of the second. Whereas the
first is associated with strength, the second, it is often said,
possesses a deeper, underlying strength as demonstrated by water
overcoming the hard and unyielding (chapter 78). Hence a
“soft” style of action, wu wei (literally,
“nonaction” but less misleadingly translated as
effortless action) is recommended, even as a style of ruling. For
example, chapter 66 says that one who desires to rule must in his
words humble himself before the people, and that one who desires to
lead the people must in his person follow them. Chapter 75 says that
rulers eat up too much in taxes and therefore people are hungry.
Rulers are too fond of action and therefore the people are difficult
to govern. Setting too much store on life makes people treat death
lightly. The last point brings out the related theme that striving
after something often produces the opposite of the intended result.
One of the more prominent themes in the Daodejing is the
rejection of moralism: a preoccupation with and striving to become
good or virtuous. Chapter 19 says to exterminate ren and
discard yi (righteousness or rectitude), and the people will
recover filial love.

One crucial ambiguity of the text is whether the “soft”
wu wei style of action is meant consistently to be extolled
over the “hard” style (as Lau claims in his introduction
to his translation of the Daodejing, 1963), or whether the
reversal of valuation is merely a heuristic device meant to correct a
common human tendency to err in the direction of consistently valuing
the hard style (LaFargue, 1992). The second alternative is consistent
with a theme plausibly attributed to the text: that all dichotomies
and all valuations based on them are unreliable in the end, even
evaluations that are reversals of the conventionally accepted ones.
Prescriptions to follow the “soft” style, taken as
exceptionless generalizations, are no more reliable than the
conventional wisdom to follow the “hard” style. On the
other hand, many of the prescriptions in the Daodejing seem
premised on the conception of there being genuine human needs that
are simple and few in number, and that desires going beyond these
needs are the source of trouble and conflict. Prescriptions for the
ruler seem to be aimed at bringing about a reversion to a kind of
primitivist state of society where no “improvements” are
sought or desired. Carried to its logical limit, this primitivism
implies the existence of a natural goodness with which human beings
ought to become attuned. Indeed, the first of the three treasures of
chapter 67 is ci or compassion. The ethics of the
Daodejing is in these respects less radical and iconoclastic
than some of its anti-moralistic language might suggest. If we are
not to strive after goodness, it is there nevertheless as something
that we must recover.

On this point the Zhuangzi often sounds a much more
skeptical note. In the second (“Equalizing All Things”)
chapter of that text, the following questions go unanswered:
“How do I know that to take pleasure in life is not a delusion?
How do I know that we who hate death are not exiles since childhood
who have forgotten the way home?” (translation from Graham,
1989, 59). The human pretension to know what is true and important is
lampooned by comparing it to the pretension of the cicada and turtle
dove to know by their own experiences of flight the possibilities of
how high creatures can fly. There is no vision of a primitivist
utopia here either. Rather, the dominant attitude towards the
possibility of large-scale social change for the better is pessimism.
It is a dangerous task for the idealist to undertake, and one that
will probably end badly for the idealist because rulers don't like to
be lectured on their failings.

Yet if there is no natural goodness that makes possible a social
utopia, there still appears to be a grain of things to which human
beings can become attuned. A pessimistic Confucius tells his
idealistic student Yan Hui that he will probably get himself killed
in trying to change the ways of a callous and violent ruler, but
Confucius goes on to say that if he insists on trying, Yan Hui must
refrain from formulating plans and goals. Such preconceptions will
only interfere with seeing the ruler as he is and how he must be
dealt with (there is a grain, then, unique to each human being to
which one must become attuned to deal with him or her). So Yan Hui
must prepare not with plans but by fasting and emptying his mind.
Elsewhere in the text, there are happier references to activities
that involve attunement to the grain of whatever is at hand. These
forms of activity are presented as supremely satisfying. The most
prominent example is that of Cook Ding, the cook who is able to wield
his knife so skillfully in cutting up oxen that it flows without a
nick through the spaces within the joints. Cook Ding has gotten past
the stage where he sees with his eyes while cutting the ox; instead
his qi or vital energies move freely to where they must go.
The kind of phenomenology to which the Zhuangzi refers is
one in which there is no self-conscious guiding of one's actions but
rather a complete absorption with the matter of hand. The efficacy
and effortlessness of such activities might appear to suggest
privileged veridical access to the situation and material at hand.

Complete absorption in the matter at hand seems to involve the
ability to keep one's desires from interfering with one's attention.
The Daodejing contains epigrams about the desirability of
being desireless, but chapter 1 of the Zhuangzi includes an
entertaining story that conveys this lesson. Huizi tries to figure
out what to do with the shells of some huge gourds he had grown. He
tried using them as water dippers and water containers, but they are
too large and heavy for those purposes. Not being able to discover a
purpose for them, he smashes them to pieces. Zhuangzi chides his
friend for having underbrush in his head and not realizing that he
could have lashed the gourds together to make a raft for floating
about on the lakes and the rivers. A recurrent theme throughout the
first chapter is that we are ruled by our preconceptions of the uses
of things, which keeps us from being able to recognize the usefulness
of the “useless.” When performing skill activities such
as Cook Ding's, preoccupation with the “uses” of these
activities can interfere with our ability to perform them well.
Woodcarver Qing (chapter 19 of the Zhuangzi) makes marvelous
bellstands. When he goes to make one, he fasts in order to still his
mind. As he fasts, the distracting thoughts of congratulation and
reward melt away, honors and salary, blame and praise, skill and
clumsiness, even his awareness of having a body and limbs. Only when
he is able to focus does he go into the forest to observe the nature
of the wood, and only then does he have a complete vision of the
bellstand.

Interpretations of the Zhuangzi tend to give primacy either
to the skeptical passages or to the passages suggesting special
access to the grain of things. On the first option, Zhuangzi simply
appreciates the many perspectives on the world one could have, the
many ways of dividing the world up by sets of distinctions, none of
which can be shown in a non-question-begging manner to be superior to
the others (Hansen, 1992, 2003). On the second option, Zhuangzi is
often taken to hold in a kind of ineffable and nonconceptual access
to the world, an access that makes possible the efficacy of
activities such as Cook Ding's (Ivanhoe, 1996; Roth 1999, 2000). A
third possibility is that the text demonstrates a kind of continuing
dialectic between skepticism and the conviction that one has genuine
knowledge, and that the dialectic has no envisioned end. The
dialectic includes a stage of skeptical questioning of whatever one's
current beliefs are, but the aim is not merely to undermine but to
reveal something about the way the world that is occluded by one's
current beliefs. However, one is not allowed to rest content with the
new beliefs but is led to question their comprehensiveness and
adequacy precisely because they are suspected of occluding still
something else about the world (Wong, 2005).

However one might try to reconcile the tension between the skeptical
questioning and the claims to special knowledge, the stories about
skill activities such as Cook Ding's arguably exemplify certain kinds
of activities that human beings across cultures and historical
periods have experienced to their great satisfaction. These
activities involve the mastery of the many sub-activities that
constitute a complex activity with goals that challenge abilities of
the agent. The activities of master musicians (e.g., the technique of
fingering on a flute), artistic performers (e.g., the placement of
the toes in the pirouette of a dancer) and athletes (e.g., bringing
the bat through the optimal plane while swinging it to hit a
baseball) correspond rather closely to Cook Ding's mastery of the
sub-activities of cutting through the ox. In all these activities the
agent does not need to pay conscious attention to performance of the
sub-activities, and this enables attention to be focused on matters
that escape the apprentice. Just as Cook Ding's skill in the motor
execution of the motions of cutting allows him to fully focus on
where the joints and spaces are, the flutist is able to concentrate
on the music as she is making it and not her fingering technique (see
Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 for a study of such activities).

One interesting and realistic detail in the cook's story challenges
the reading of the skill stories as extolling the possibility of
nonconceptual access to the grain of things. The cook says that
whenever he comes to a complicated place in the ox, he sizes up the
difficulties, tell himself to watch out and be careful, keeps his
eyes on what he's doing, works very slowly, and moves the knife with
the greatest subtlety until the pieces fall away. Clearly there is
conceptualization going on here, and in fact it is implausible to
deny that the whole activity is being guided by a conceptualized
goal! There is a difference between self-conscious conceptualization
of experience and the application of concepts without awareness of
applying them. One mustn't confuse the latter with nonconceptualized
experience. While there may be some way of squaring this part of the
story with the interpretation that nonconceptual experience is
celebrated in the Zhuangzi, the virtue of the story is that
it is realistic and captures aspects of supremely skilled activities
that are part of the experience of many people. Insofar as the
Zhuangzi recommends such activities as part of a good life,
it very much presents an ethic.

It also presents an ethic in supporting the idea of inclusiveness and
acceptance. Here skeptical questioning of what we think we know,
especially what we think we know about people and who is good and has
something to offer to us are questioned in the chapter featuring
stigmatized individuals, often with feet amputated (a common criminal
punishment of the time), who turn out to be masters drawing as many
students as Confucius. The Zhuangzi also urges
identification and acceptance of the whole and of any and all of the
changes that its creatures undergo. We should not be so sure that
life is great and death is evil, and accept everything that comes our
way, marveling at the possibility that upon our death we might be
made into a fly's foreleg the next time around. The
Zhuangzi, like the Daodejing, calls upon human
beings to identify with the whole of the cosmos and its
transformations, and such identification involves acceptance, even
celebration of death and loss, because in dying one participates in
the next transformation of the cosmos and becomes something else to
marvel at, such as a fly's foreleg. Such a call may hold deep appeal,
especially for those who cannot see any form of monotheism as a
viable object for belief and yet desire some sort of spiritual
connection that stretches beyond the merely human community.

However, such a call also raises challenging questions about human
possibility. Can human beings really accept the loss of their selves
and their loved ones with the kind of equanimity that identification
with the whole requires? The Zhuangzi presents stories that
represent different possibilities for conceiving of the nature of
this equanimity. In the stories of the four masters, death is
accepted without the slightest shiver. In the story of the death of
Zhuangzi's wife, a more complex emotional story is told, whereby
Zhuangzi first feels her loss but comes to accept it as yet another
transformation. This story suggests that one may retain one's
attachments to particular people and yet maintain resilience in the
face of their loss because of one's identification with the whole
(see Becker, 1998 for an discussion of resilience in the face of loss
in the context of developing a contemporary Stoicism). But how is
such identification psychologically possible? In the
Zhuangzi, it seems based on a spirit of restless and joyful
exploration of the richness of the cosmos. In the end, it embodies
the emotion that is perhaps most fundamental to philosophy, and that
is wonder.

There is one more ethical implication of Daoism ethics that is more
of an implication that could be drawn by contemporary philosophers
than one that was drawn in the foundational texts. The
Zhuangzi's lampooning of human pretension and arrogance,
together with call to identify with the whole and with the nonhuman
parts of nature, has appealed to those seeking philosophical
perspectives within which to frame an environmental ethic (see
Girardot, Miller, and Liu, 2001). A Daoist perspective offers both an
alternative to an instrumentalist approach that would ground an
environmental ethic solely in the idea that it defeats human beings'
interests to foul their own environment and to an intrinsic value
approach that would ground duties to nature solely in a value that it
possesses apart from its relation to human beings. A Daoist approach
might point to the way that the human traits are conditioned by and
responses to the nonhuman environment, such that these traits cannot
be specified independently of the environment. In other words the
Daoist self is not a substantial independent existence but a
relational one whose boundaries extend into the conventionally
nonhuman, and from a Daoist perspective that is reconstructed to be
oriented toward the problem of the environment, we would do well to
acknowledge the ways in which whatever we value in ourselves is
connected to the nonhuman (Hourdequin and Wong, 2005). Treating the
environment correctly is not purely a matter of satisfying
conventional human interests such as conserving resources for our
future consumption, nor need it be a matter of recognizing a value
that the environment has in complete independence of its impact on
us. It can be a matter of recognizing that who we are cannot be
cleanly separated from the nonhuman environment. Moreover, there is
much to be gained from being open to the transformation of our
interests if we remain open to new sources of satisfaction in the
nonhuman environment that currently escape our conceptions of the
“useful” (recall Huizi and the gourds).

Legalism is perhaps best introduced as the opposite reaction to
Analects 2.3, in which Confucius says that guiding the
people by edicts and keeping them in line with punishments will keep
them out of trouble but will give them no sense of shame; guiding
them by virtue and keeping them in line with the rites will not only
give them a sense of shame but enable them to reform themselves. In
the most prominent Legalist text, the Hanfeizi (Hanfei lived
during the 3rd century B.C.E.), the people are
characterized as far too swayed by their material interests to be
guided by a sense of shame. People must be guided by clear edicts and
strong punishments. Furthermore, rulers must be wary of their
ambitious ministers and take care not to reveal their own likes and
dislikes so as not to be manipulated by their scheming subordinates.
As to rulers themselves, it is a mistake to found government on the
presumption that they are or can become virtuous. While exceptionally
good and exceptionally evil rulers have existed, the vast majority of
rulers have been mediocre. Governments must be structured so that it
can run satisfactorily, because that is what rulers will be like
almost always.

The Confucians held that the remedy to China's turmoil and chaos lay
in wise and morally excellent rulers—that moral excellence
would ripple downwards from the top and create harmony and
prosperity. The Daodejing upholds a vision of an original
harmony that human beings once had, a way that consisted in living in
accord with the natural grain of things, and that involves seeking
only what one truly needs, not in multiplying useless desires that
only agitate and ultimately make us unhappy. The Legalists rejected
moral and spiritual transformation, of either the Confucian or Laoist
kind, as the solution to China's troubles. Most human beings will
remain unlovely beings to the end, and governmental structures must
be designed for such beings. The sort of structure recommended is a
highly centralized government in which the ruler retains firm control
of the “two handles” of government: punishment and favor
(chapter 7). By making sure he always has his own hands on these
handles, the ruler remains in firm control of his ministers. If a
minister proposes a way to get something done, measure his
performance on whether he gets it done in the way he says he will. If
not, punish him. The ruler is to hold his officials strictly to the
definitions of their role responsibilities, so that they are punished
not only when they fail to perform some of those assigned
responsibilities but also when they do more than their assigned
responsibilities.

Some of the most interesting parts of the text consist of arguments
supporting the necessity of governmental structure and the folly of
depending on the character of rulers. The “Five Vermin”
chapter (49) presents an important and provocative argument that
threatens to undermine the basis of virtue ethics. It is argued there
that social harmony and prosperity is an achievement requiring
fortuitous circumstances. The chapter does not dispute an assumption
that is commonly held across Chinese philosophical schools—that
the sage-kings of ancient times were virtuous and ruled over a
harmonious and prosperous society. It is disputed, however, that
their virtue was the primary cause of this golden age. What about
those kings in more recent times who were ren and
yi, benevolent and righteous, and who got wiped out for
their trouble? Virtue is not the explanation of success or failure.
The explanation has much more to do with the scarcity of goods in
relation to the number of people. This argument has in fact been
repeated in contemporary analytic moral philosophy by philosophers
drawing from “situationist” psychology, which highlights
the importance of situations rather than “global”
character traits in causing behavior. Global traits involve
dispositions to behave in certain ways regardless of the situation or
at least across a wide range of situations. One of the most striking
experiments marshaled in favor of situationism was conducted in a
theological seminary, where students were set up to encounter a
person slumped in an alleyway. The experiment was to see what factors
influenced a student's decision whether to stop and offer aid. It was
found that by far the most influential variable was whether students
were in a hurry for the next appointment, rather than the nature of
students' commitments to religion or the nature of the tasks in which
they were engaged at the time, even if the task was preparing a
sermon on the Good Samaritan (Darley and Batson, 1973)! Philosophers
Gilbert Harman (1998–99, 1999–2000) and John Doris (2000)
have used studies like this to argue that global character traits are
a myth and that the type of situation has much more to do with how
people behave than any supposed character or personality they
possess. Hanfeizi, then was the first situationist. The way that
Hanfeizi's situationism threatens Confucian virtue ethics is that it
disputes the possibility of the junzi, noblepersons who
possess firm and stable excellent characters.

Confucians can give replies to such arguments. The most obvious reply
is that they never promised virtue would be easy. Indeed, the
canonical texts all stress the difficulty of achieving full virtue.
Mencius in particular conceives of moral development as extending the
natural beginnings of virtue to situations where they ought to extend
but do not currently extend. The experiments in psychology marshaled
in favor of situationism, moreover, typically do point to a minority
of subjects who show a more desirable consistency of behavior in the
experimental situation. Confucians might also object that good
results will follow from the kind of structure described in the
Hanfeizi only if persons of good-enough character staff it.
The Hanfeizi sometimes implicitly acknowledges this point
and integrates it with a reasonable stress on structure and
impersonal administration. In chapter 6 there is discussion of what
is necessary to compensate for a mediocre ruler: getting able people
with the right motives to serve that ruler. Institute laws and
regulations specifying how these people are selected: not on the
basis of reputation alone, since that will give people an incentive
to curry favor with their associates and subordinates and disregard
the ruler; not on the basis of cliques, since that will motivate
people only to establish connections rather than acquire the
qualifications to perform in office. Specify the qualifications
clearly in laws and regulations, appoint, promote, and dismiss
strictly according to these specifications. The law, not the ruler's
personal views, must form the basis for these actions. In chapter 43,
consideration is given to the suggestion that those who take heads in
battle should be rewarded with desirable offices. This is rejected in
cases where the office requires wisdom and ability rather than
courage. In the end, one wonders whether a good number of such
persons of right motive, competence, courage, wisdom and ability are
enough, given the highly centralized nature of the government
recommended in the Hanfeizi. A lot depends on the ruler who
wields the “two handles” of government. Taken in moderate
doses, Hanfeizi arguably provides a needed corrective to the
Confucian emphasis on character. Structure can be designed with an
eye to the realistic possibilities for mediocre and bad rulers. The
Confucian emphasis on discretion in judgment is obviously subject to
abuse that can be checked by structures that provide a degree of
impersonal administration and consistent application of relatively
clear laws and regulations. The American legal experience seems to
show, however, that no set of laws can interpret itself with an eye
to complex situations that are unforeseeable when laws are framed.
Ultimately, stable character and wise discretion are needed.

The strongest challenge that Legalism raises to virtue ethics is not
that stable virtues are impossible to achieve, but that they are not
realistic possibilities for most persons, and that therefore lofty
virtue ideals cannot provide the basis for a large-scale social
ethic. Even if these ideals are directed only at an elite that is
then expected to lead the rest of the people, the question arises as
to what influence this elite can have on the rest if the majority do
not have some attraction to virtue. It is dubious, however, that the
solution lies in seeking to make character irrelevant.

Buddhism is not indigenous to China, and it has a long and rich
tradition of thought and practice in India and in areas other than
China. This brief section will focus on ethical aspects of the most
distinctive form of Buddhism that developed once it was introduced to
China: Chan Buddhism, or as it came to be known later in Japan, Zen.
It should be noted, however, that prominent forms of Chinese Buddhism
also include Tiantai and Huayan. All three forms of Chinese Buddhism
developed in interaction with indigenous Chinese thought, especially
Daoism. Chan developed partly as a response to the perception of some
Chinese Buddhists that Tiantai and Huayan had developed in overly
scholastic directions with proliferating metaphysical distinctions
and doctrines that hinder rather than aid Enlightenment.

The immediate focus of Buddhist ethics is the problem of suffering,
and a conception of the self is at the heart of the Buddhist response
to that problem. The self is conceived as a floating collection of
various psychophysical reactions and responses with no fixed center
or unchanging ego entity. The usual human conception of self as a
fixed and unchanging center is a delusion. Our bodily attributes,
various feelings, perceptions, ideas, wishes, dreams, and in general
a consciousness of the world display a constant interplay and
interconnection that leads us to the belief that there is some
definite ‘I’ that underlies and is independent of the
ever-shifting series. But there is only the interacting and
interconnected series. Human suffering ultimately stems from a
concern for the existence and pleasures and pains of the kind of self
that never existed in the first place. Recognition of the
impermanence of the self can lead to release or mitigation of
suffering, but the recognition cannot merely be intellectual. It must
involve transformation of one's desires. The belief on some abstract
level, for example, that there are no permanent selves is a belief
that can co-exist with having and acting on intense desires to avoid
death, as if death were some evil befalling some underlying
‘I’. Similarly, the intellectual recognition that none of
the “things” of ordinary life are fixed and separate
entities, anymore than the self is, can lead to recognition of all of
life as an interdependent whole and to the practical attitude of
compassion for all of life. But if the latter recognition is again
merely intellectual, one can still have and act on intensely
self-regarding desires at severe cost to others. In both cases a
transformation of desire is what is required in order to go beyond
the merely intellectual and to achieve true Enlightenment and
meaningful recognition of one's true nature as impermanent and as
interdependent with all other things.

Recall the practical focus and the closeness to pre-theoretical
experience that are distinctive of indigenous Chinese philosophy.
These traits interacted with Buddhism as it was introduced into
China. The ‘Chan’ in “Chan Buddhism” comes
from the Sanskrit ‘dhyana’ which means
meditation. Though meditation practice is not the only practice
employed in Chan, its central role does illustrate the focus on
achieving transformation of one's desires through experience of the
self and the world. This kind of transformation is different than
reaching intellectual conviction through textual study and
understanding of argumentation, and also different than escape from
the world of suffering through obliteration of one's consciousness as
an individual being. Chinese Buddhism in the form of Chan was
especially influential in putting forward this conception of
Enlightenment as lived in this world rather than escape from it.

Daoism in particular has themes that make it especially appropriate
for interaction with Buddhism. Recall the theme that one must keep
desires from interfering with one's attention to the matter at hand.
Correspondingly, a major theme in Chan is that all forms of striving,
especially the very striving for Enlightenment, interfere with
attention to one's true nature (Hui Neng, 638–713, Platform
Scripture). Hence the reason for the otherwise puzzlingly harsh
reactions of Chan masters to the earnest strivings of their students
to reach Enlightenment (Yi Xuan, d. 866, The Recorded
Conversations of Linji Yi Xuan) especially if such strivings
have any tinge of the academic or doctrinal about them (Huang Po, d.
850, The Transmission of Mind). Recall also the theme in
Daodejing concerning the dao as the source of the
myriad things. The Buddha's insight into the nature of the many
things brought him to recognize the Many as also the One. Finally,
recall the skeptical theme in Daoism about the limits of
conceptualization. The Buddha's insight into the Many as also the One
does not mean that the Many are really only One, but rather Many and
Once at once, and if we have difficulty making sense of that, it is
founded in the limits of our conceptualization. Finally, there is the
same possibility for ambiguity as to whether there is some ineffable
and nonconceptual access to an ultimate reality or whether there is
skeptical question that goes all the way down (or all the way up?).
In the Zhuangzi this ambiguity is quite apparent. And though
Chan is usually taken to affirm a foundation in ineffable access
(Kasulis, 1986), there are those who argue that a thoroughgoing
skepticism is truer to its spirit (Wright, 1998).

Since the self is a bundle of changing psychological and physical
attributes whose boundaries are conventionally established, and since
its attributes exist only in relation to other things outside its
conventionally established boundaries, it ought to dampen attachment
its self-regarding cares and concerns and widen the boundaries of its
concerns to embrace all life. This Buddhist reasoning certainly is an
interesting way to ground impersonal concern, and it may appeal to
those of us who see little plausibility in the idea of Cartesian
substances as fixed ego entities. On the other hand, this reasoning
may seem to drain all passion from life, and it requires that we
dampen the attachment we have not only to our selves but also to
particular others such as friends and family members. Buddhism is
especially well known for its advocacy of detachment, not only from
material possessions, worldly power and status, but also from
particular people and communities. For example, in Ashvaghosha's poem
on “Nanda the Fair,” the Buddha explains to Nanda that
delusion alone ties one person to another (Conze, 1959, 110). The
argument is that a family is like a group of travelers at an inn who
come together for a while and then part. No one belongs to anyone
else. A family is held together only as sand is held in a clenched
fist. Issues as to the desirability and realistic possibility of such
a detached attitude arise here, and not surprisingly, the issues are
similar to ones raised by Daoist identification with the cosmos. As
the discussion of Zhuangzi and wife made clear, it may be possible to
distinguish as an alternative to the pure and complete detachment
exemplified in Ashvagosha another kind that is consistent with
emotional involvement with others for as long as they are given to
us.

Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames, 1987, Thinking Through
Confucius, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

–––, 1998, Chapter 2, “The
Focus-Field Self in Classical Confucianism,” in Thinking from
the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western
Culture, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 23–43.

–––, 2003, “Guru or Skeptic? Relativistic
Skepticism in the Zhuangzi,” in Hiding the World in
the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, ed. Scott Cook,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 128–162.

–––, 2004, “Whose Democracy? Which Rights?
A Confucian Critique of Modern Western Liberalism,”
in Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and
Community, ed. Kwong-loi Shun and David B. Wong, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 49–71.

Roth, Harold D., 1999, Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh)
and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism, New York, Columbia
University Press.

–––, 2004, “Conception of the Person in Early
Confucian Thought,” in Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of
Self, Autonomy, and Community, ed. Kwong-loi Shun and David B.
Wong, New York: Cambridge University Press, 183–199.

Slingerland, Edward, 2000, “Why Philosophy is Not
‘Extra’ in Understanding the Analects” and
“Reply to Bruce Brooks and A. Takeo Brooks,” Philosophy
East & West 50: 137–41, 146–7.

–––, 2004, “Rights and Community in
Confucianism,” in
Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and
Community, ed. Kwong-loi Shun and David B. Wong, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 31–48.

–––, 2005, “Zhuangzi and the Obsession with Being
Right,”
History of Philosophy Quarterly
22 (2005): 91–107.